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THINGS SEEN 



IMPRESSIONS OF MEN, CITIES, AND BOOKS 



BY 

G. W. STEEVENS 



SELECTED AND EDITED BY 
G. S. STREET 



WITH A MEMOIR BY 
W. E. HENLEY 



INDIANAPOLIS, U. S. A. 

THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY 
PUBLISHERS 



THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copies Received 

MAR. 9 1901 

Copyright entry 

CLASS <^XXc. N». 

COPY B. 



TR ^t^' 

C,!?^^ 



Copyright, 1900, in the United States of America 
THE BOWEN-MERRILL COMPANY 



G. W. S. 

lOTH DECEMBER 1869 ; isth JANUARY 1900 

We cheered you forth — brilliant and kind and brave. 
Under your country's triumphing flag you fell. 
It floats, true heart, over no dearer grave. 
Brave and brilliant and kind, hail and farewell ! 

W. E. H. 



CONTENTS 



BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH OF THE AUTHOR 



The New Humanitarianism 

From the New Gibbon 

What Happened in Thessaly 

The Monotype 

Mr. Balfour's Philosophy 

' ' Little Eyolf ' ' 

Zola 

The New Tennyson 

Words for Music 

The Futile Don 

At Twenty-Four 

A Fable of Journalists 

The Dreyfus Case — 

I. Scenes and Actors in the Trial 
II. The Effect on France 



contents 

The Jubilee — 

I. London's New Game 
II. Queen and Empire 
III. " To View the Illuminations ' 
I V. The Great Review 
V. The Great Review — continued 
The Feast of St. Wagner — I, II, III 
In Search of a Famine — I, II, III, IV 
" During Her Majesty's Pleasure " — I, II 
In the Country of The Storm 
The Derby — I, II 
The Cesarewitch 
Two Hospitals — 

I. Out-Patients' Day 
II. In the Theatre 



Appendix 



MEMOIR. 

Through war and pestilence, red siege and fire, 
Silent and self-contained he drew his breath; 
Brave, not for show of courage — his desire 
Truth, as he saw it, even to the death. 

— Rudyard Kipling. 

The great necessity imposed upon our England by 
the policy of the Afrikanders inside and out of Cape 
Colony has cost us many precious lives. I speak for 
my own set, and with no better outlook than the rest 
over the many hundreds of brave and brilliant and 
beautiful creatures who, at the especial instance of 
the mad and criminal old man at Pretoria, have 
chosen ratlier to surrender this good earth, and all 
that she gifts her children withal, than to suffer that 
an insolent and monstrous wrong were done upon 
that piece of her to whose inheritance, in all its 
felicity of pride and freedom, they were born. But 
I do not think that I speak excessively when I say 
that, when George Steevens died at Ladysmith, of 
enteric fever (which is, being translated, filth and 
low living), there was lost in him as fine a spirit, 
as rare and as completely trained a brain, and as 
brave a heart, as we had to show. I write after 
Kimberley, Paardeberg, Pieter's Hill, Bloemfontein, 
Kroonstadt, with Mafeking rewarded for her bril- 



viu MEMOIR 

liant and heroic feat of arms, with what was the 
Orange Free State British territory, and with Lord 
Roberts knocking dreadfully at the heart of the 
Transvaal Republic; and I cannot choose but reflect 
upon the fact that these victorious feats all come to 
me the less triumphingly for that his part in them 
is not. He had many friends, so that in this I am 
by no means singular; and our consolation is that 
he was so good an Englishman that, were it now 
possible, he would be the first to rebuke us for our 
cowardice. 

I. 

I have called this note a "Memoir"; but, in plain 
English, no memoir of him is possible. The story of 
his life consists in his school successes and in his 
books; and, apart from these, there is little or noth- 
ing to record. Does it, for instance, advance our 
knowledge of him so very much to record that he 
came of good, sound, middle-class stock, was born 
in a London suburb,^ and could read with a good 
appreciation of facts, at three to four years old? It 
has all to be said, I suppose; yet it isn't very inter- 
esting — surely? I gather, however, that, for all his 
precocity, he was that best of good things — a true 
child: which is as much as to say that he ended as 
he began, with "that child's heart within the man's" 

^ His speech bewrayed him till the end. It may be that 
"II n'est bon bee que de Paris" is true of Chaucer's town 
as it was of Villon's. If it be, then George Steevens's 
accent was the best in England, 



MEMOIR IX 

an unending refreshment to him, and an unfailing 
joy to all the rightly constituted children whom he 
met.i In the beginning he ruled the roast; for one 
of his joys was an atlas, and when anybody got to 
anywhere in the illustrated papers, then he and his 
brothers and sisters also had to get there — in a 
packing-case for a ship, and with lots of information 
from the skipper as to the habits and customs of the 
natives, the longitude and latitude of the port of 
destination, the mineral, vegetable, and zoological 
features of the region, and all the rest of it. Pres- 
ently he went to school, and in no great while he 
developed into a prize boy, and so into a prize stu- 
dent — an exhibitioner — a prodigy (even) — a don of 
as few years as a don may have and be real. 

But he never lost (so I am told) his interest in 
"larks," whether informative or not. And his sim- 
plicity, his soundness of heart, his integrity of mind 
remained until the end of things unaltered and un- 
alterable. So they tell me who knew him best in 
the early days. So they tell me who knew him 
afterwards, when he was no longer a kind of cham- 
pion pot-hunter, but a man cut loose from his moor- 
ings and sent adrift on the sea of life and time and 
experience, there to play his game and approve 

^ In the early days of our acquaintance he came to 
lunch with us. He was silent and shy, but he could not 
escape the eye of the serenest and sincerest thing that ever 
lived; and in the course of the afternoon she proposed to 
him, and he was finally taken into her exquisite and beau- 
tiful little life. 



X MEMOIR 

himself. So I found him, and, as I have said, so 
he was found by a better — an infinitely better — 
judge than I. The truth is, I take it, that in George 
Steevens the character was even greater than the in- 
telligence. He might have been the most brilliant 
and the most wonderful portent ever turned out of 
the Academies, and yet have been a "bounder" 
(there is no other word, so I must use the only word 
there is), or a pedant, or a pedant and a "bounder" 
both. But honesty, a radiant sincerity, straightness 
of mind and temper and tongue — these were 
George Steevens. That he had brains and accom- 
plishment is not much to the point. The point is 
that he had character: a nature sweet yet strong, 
the finer instincts finely touched, so that he was be- 
loved of children in his life, and in his death may 
neither be forgotten nor replaced among his friends. 

11. 

In the beginning he went to a private teacher's, 
but at thirteen (1882) he won his way into the City 
of London School, and there he proceeded to dis- 
tinguish himself as none had done before him. 
Prize after prize he took, medal after medal,^ till in 

^ Four silver medals, and a (special) gold one. Here, 
from the School Magazine, is a list of his honours: "Leav- 
ing out of account numerous prizes and medals, his school 
and academic distinctions were as follows: Sassoon En- 
trance Scholarship, 1882; Carpenter Scholarship, 1885; 
Captain of the School, 1887; Classical Scholarship at Bal- 
liol College, Oxford, 1887; Sassoon Sanskrit Exhibition, 



MEMOIR ^ XI 

1887, being captain of the school, he took the Class- 
ical Scholarship at Balliol, and, having done so, 
proceeded to distinguish himself yet more, till he 
came to be known as "the Balliol prodigy." Not 
being a 'Varsity man (as they say), I cannot appre- 
ciate his triumphs as, being the writer of this Mem- 
oir, I ought, no doubt, to do. But the list of them 
is striking; and I have marvelled more than once, 
and been not alone in my marvelling, over the 
quality of his intelligence, which survived them all, 
and, more than that, came to the world's work per- 
fectly accomplished, yet vigorous, apprehensive, 
athletic even, as could be.^ He might, I always 
felt, have won his way from pot to pot, from prize 

City of London School, 1888; Abbott Scholarship, City 
of London School, 1888; Proxime accessit for Hertford 
University Scholarship (Oxford), 1888; Honourably men- 
tioned for Ireland Scholarship (Oxford), 1888; First in 
honours at Matriculation Examination (London Univer- 
sity), 1889; First Class in Classical Moderations (Oxford), 
1890; Exhibition in Classics in Intermediate Examination 
(London University), 1889; Scholarship in Classics at B. 
A. Examination (London University), 1890; First Class 
in Final Classical School (Oxford), 1892; Fellow of Pem- 
broke College, Oxford, 1893." 

' "The mere quantity of his knowledge was astonishing; 
his command over it was still more so. He had a Napole- 
onic faculty for instantaneous and complete concentration 
of his intellectual forces." — B. A. Abrahams, in the 'City 
of London School Magazine,' March, 1900. That is most 
true. He was so complete master of his equipment and 
his means alike, that, as another school friend has re- 
corded, he wrote his 'Monologues' with a running pen, 
and scarce ever a reference to the authorities shelved at 
his back. 



xu MEMOIR 

to prize, and then, his mind exhausted with the 
work of assimilation, have quietly declined upon a 
curacy, or a grammar-school mastership, or a 
tutor's place in his college: capable of living inter- 
est in nothing excepting drinks and the minor 
niceties, the riddles and cruces, of classical scholar- 
ship. But he did nothing of the kind. On the 
contrary, he came out into the world, and, for aught 
one knew, he was not lettered at all, but only a 
type of Young Oxford: a youth with a pince-nez 
and a soft hat and a turn for Ibsen and Zola and 
all manner of extremes. I read of him that he was 
a capital speaker, with a vein of paradox and a bot- 
toming of humour which kept him ever within 
the pale of reasonable unreasonableness; and I 
can very well believe it. Humour he had, and wit, 
and that excellently trained intelligence of his was 
excellently active and sane: only, being above all 
things wise, he did not, young as he was, essentially 
and despite his tremendous tutoring — he did not 
choose to begin his real life in too flagrant a humour 
of offence. I think he must needs have been a 
little tired, and indefatigable athlete as he'd shown 
himself, was glad of a rest, and content to lie by 
and take stock of things. Be this as it may, he left 
Oxford for Cambridge, and at Cambridge he wrote 
and edited the 'Cambridge Observer:' a journal 
very plainly modelled (but with improvements!) on 
an older 'Observer/ in which latter he was after- 
wards to print his one serious contribution to 
English letters. I have read his 'Cambridge Ob- 



MEMOIR xui 

server' work, and it is enough that none of it has 
seemed worth reprinting in this volume either to 
my colleague, Mr. Street, or to myself. It showed, 
however, that there was somebody with a pen ; and 
a result of it was that, Mr. Oscar Browning aiding, 
George Steevens joined the staff of the 'Pall Mall 
Gazette,' and now came out into the world indeed. 

III. 

He did so in a happy time. He was well and thrice 
well grounded in books; as ever, the golden chance 
was his, and he was to be well and thrice well 
grounded in affairs of men. A little before, there 
was nothing to be said about the 'Pall Mall Gazette* 
except that it had seen better days. A good thing 
in the beginning, it had gone on to be the most 
notorious journal in the world, and then, lighting 
upon evil and sober days, had fallen as low as a 
journal can, and live. Then, by a stroke of fortune 
as sudden and as dramatic, I think, as anything in 
the history of journalism, its estate was changed. 
It became the property of an American gentleman, 
Mr. William Waldorf Astor, who showed at once 
that he had wit and enterprise and savoir-faire, as 
well as money, by placing its control in the hands 
of a man who knew nothing whatever of journal- 
ism, but was, as was abundantly shown in the se- 
quel, the most brilliant and daring Editor of his 
time. He was young, had read hard, had travelled 
far; knew all sorts and conditions of men; was 



XIV MEMOIR 

versed in all sorts and conditions of things; had a 
great sense of politics : with prestance, gaiety, po- 
sition, a beautiful temperament. With never a 
touch of Fleet Street in his make, he was better 
than all Fleet Street put together at Fleet Street's 
own particular game; and to him, as to David in 
the Cave of Adullam, there flocked the younger and 
more daring spirits of whose aid he stood in need. 
One was George Warrington Steevens, and he 
came out of the experience a made man. They 
were all young men in the office of the 'Pall Mall 
Gazette.' Even the Assistant Editor, albeit the old- 
est in years, had in him the stuff of unending youth, 
and despite his great range of knowledge, his fine 
sense of political conduct, his serene, immitigable 
Toryism, had gaiety of heart enough, and wit and 
talk, and experience of the comedy of life and time 
and affairs enough, to be not much the elder of the 
youngest. Then the 'National Observer,' a journal 
which, as I've said elsewhere, is still remembered 
with affection and regret "by the chosen few who 
wrote for it and the chosen fewer who read it" — 
the 'National Observer,' I say, was still afoot, and 
though conscious of its moribundity — of the fact 
that in the midst of life we are in death — was keep- 
ing the bravest of fronts; and its young men were 
burning for new worlds to conquer. These new 
worlds, or an approach to them, they found in the 
Tall Mall Gazette,' as that ancient and battered 
print was refashioned and refitted, te Teucro diice: 
with Mr. Gust at the helm, and Mr. W. W. Astor, 



MEMOIR XV 

in the guise of a favouring gale, at the prow. 
George Steevens came in with the rest. He was 
in the soft-hat-and-scarlet-tie stage of youthful 
manhood: a rather shy, a rather sulky or (so it 
seemed), a rather gloomy and socialistic junior don. 
So he appeared to me when at last I was privileged 
to make his acquaintance; so, I believe, he ap- 
peared to all the mariners in the new ship. But 
appearances were not long against him. I think he 
interested everbody from the first, and when he did 
so much as that, the sequel was inevitable. You 
started with a kindness for him, and you liked him, 
as you went on knowing him, better and better, 
more and more. And, believe me, it was a change 
and a chance for him. Hitherto he had been pri- 
mus inter pares — a leader among boys. In the 
office of the 'Pall Mall Gazette' everybody, as I've 
said, was young; but he was the youngest of all, 
even as he was the only one who had not some salt 
of active life. Out of a past of books and prizes 
and debating societies and sentimental socialism, he 
came into an atmosphere of wit, and scholarship, 
and laughter, and sound Toryism, and the practice 
— the right practice — of affairs.^ As I said, he was 

^ If he came to his work a philosophical Radical (what- 
ever that may mean), he was very soon as good an Eng- 
lishman as the best of his new-found yet unalterable 
friends. I have read somewhere that, in after years, he did 
but pretend to approve the reconquest of the Sudan, the 
reply to Mr. Kruger's declaration of war: that what he 
wrote about these matters was written to please the public, 
and in no sort represented his own convictions. As one 
who knew him very intimately, I can but say that I'll not 



xvi MEMOIR 

sulky and shy — or rather he was shy to the point of 
seeming sulky. But he soon endeared himself to 
every man in the place; at last his gift of humour 
got an irritant and an outlet both; at last his pre- 
tensions to ascendency, superiority, impeccability 
were subjected to a common and continuous test, 
and he was howled at if he did ill, as he was ap- 
plauded if he did well. As his Editor, who loved 
and understood him, gave him all manner of oppor- 
tunities, and turned him, all in the day's work, now 
on to the writing of flippant paragraphs, now on to 
the conduct of a matter in dispute which might have 
embroiled two kingdoms, but in which his sound 
yet brilliant handling of maps and texts and facts 
was sure to keep the journal "right side up," and 
"with a lot to spare,"^ he came in for a great 
deal of both execration and applause. It was, as 
I believe, the making of him — it and, as I believe, 
the 'National Observer,' to which at this time he 
sent, from week to week, reviews which are models 
of their kind: reviews or scholarly or savage or 
merely blighting; and with these, and certain lead- 
ers and "middles" on matters of the moment, or on 
things in general, the several numbers of what must 

believe it. He was too good an Englishman and too poor 
a hypocrite. That, despite his Toryism, he remained a 
philosophical Radical is like enough. I have yet to learn, 
in fact, that there is any very considerable difference be- 
tween the several points of view. 

^ In those days the 'Pall Mall Gazette' was easily, not to 
say loosely, written. I find that I have relapsed upon the 
manner of it. So I keep the slang. 



MEMOIR xvii 

in the end be recognised as his sole achievement in 
pure Hterature. I mean, of course, those wonder- 
ful 'Monologues,'- in which, applying his reading 
and intelligence and humanity to the work of pic- 
turing and expressing the historical men and 
women of a bygone time, he recreated and renewed 
for us — brought as it were to our very doorsteps — ■ 
figures and characters so diverse and remote as 
Troilus and Xantippe, Brutus the pedant and Com- 
modus the madman, Vespasian, with his work-a- 
day views of empire, and Nero, Cicero, Alcibiades: 
the wonderful 'Augustus,' with its luminous and 
easy mastery of Rofnan politics at a time when 
Roman politics were at their cloudiest; and greatly 
daring, succeded in suggesting even the mighty 
Caius Julius. It is when you come to think that 
these re-creations, these interpretings, these admir- 
able and daring transfigurations (so to speak) of 
living Greece and Rome were done at four- or 
five-and-twenty, between spells of journalism, that 
you realise the great capacity George Steevens had, 
and the sort of man of letters he might and should 
have been. It seemed other to the Gods. But 

* Monologues of the Dead. London: Methuen. 1895. 
Note that the method is, so far as it goes, on all fours 
with Shakespeare's. Steevens translates, or transliterates, 
his Greeks and Romans into the terms of the life he knew, 
and takes his lingo from the 'Sporting Times' if need be. 
What else does Shakespeare do in "Troilus," in "Antony," 
in "Coriolanus"? His Thersites alone sufifices to show 
how very well his pupil had learned his lesson, and how 
brilliantly he put his learning out to use. 



xviii MEMOIR 

knowing not their minds, men may lament, as I 
do, that they who gave us thus much refused us 
more. 

IV. 

But Scripture saith. An ending! This peculiar 
set of circumstances was too good to last. Of the 
'National Observer' there was presently left (1894) 
not much else than the aspect and the name, and 
not long afterwards not even these; and in the 
sequel (1895) the Tall Mall Gazette,' by the opera- 
tion of a change as dramatic and as sudden as that 
which had resulted in its renascence, changed 
Editors and staffs once more, and, from being a 
power in the land, became once more an everyday 
evening journal. That Steevens did not instantly 
follow his friends into the vacancy of an enforced 
leisure was merely due, I believe, to the fact that 
he was working to the terms of an engagement. 
These fulfilled, he also went into retirement for a 
while; and, having married at the end of 1894, was 
content to lie low and be happy. At the same time, 
by way of keeping himself in touch with affairs, he 
proceeded to master and to say his say upon the 
question of the British Navy,^ and to make him- 
self welcome, as a man qualified to speak with 
prestance and authority on many things, to 'Black- 
wood.' Then (1896) came the second chance of 
his life (I except his marriage, which was a thing 

^ Naval Policy. By G. W. Steevens. London: Methuen. 
1896. 



MEMOIR xix 

apart from the ordinary courses of human life, and 
was in the event as fortunate as in the beginning it 
had seemed bewildering), and on the invitation of 
Mr. Alfred Harmsworth, a man of large and splen- 
did inventions, he joined the staff of the 'Daily 
Miail:' a journal in whose service he was to de- 
velop a talent of a strange and taking brilliancy 
(its existence none had suspected in him), which 
was to give its chief, if not its sole, literary inter- 
est, to the work he rejoiced to do for it. He had 
shown, not once but many times, that he could 
understand. He was now to prove to admiration 
that he could both understand and see : that, given 
a figure, an aspect, an incident, even a great and 
notable passage in affairs, he could apply that ad- 
mirable brain of his to the task of observing and 
realising what he saw, on lines so essential and so 
clean that, his faculty of speech thrown in, 'twas 
easy for him — almost too easy — to pass on the 
final effect of his vision. This is putting it badly 
enough, no doubt; and I do not know that it will 
make matters very much better to note that, at the 
time of his recording his impressions in the terms 
which made his fame, he stood alone among Eng- 
lish journalists. To be sure, the capacity he showed 
was not now for the first time shown in English 
journalism. Dickens had exampled it, and that 
with "an immense and far-reaching instinct of the 
Picturesque" (I quote from memory, from Mr. 
Henry James); so had Ruskin; so had Meredith 
and R. L. Stevenson; so had Rudyard Kipling. 



XX MEMOIR 

I do not think that Steevens was deeply read in any 
of these writers ;i and that I do not think so is 
enough to show that I hold him better versed in 
Greek and Latin than he was in English, All the 
same, he was cut out of the same stuff with them: 
the peculiar capacity for vision and realisation, 
which was theirs, was his also; so that his 'Om- 
durman,' done amid the stinks and horrors of the 
field, is like to remain a classic — and a classic un- 
surpassed — for many years to come. He had a 
sort of visual grip of things : not reckless, nor hap- 
hazard, nor touched with sentiment; but alert, ath- 
letic, of an absolute and unalterable serenity. I am 
told (and I can very well believe) that a certain 
commander-in-chief, himself the hardest and stern- 
est of communicants, has, on his own confession, 
been more than once indebted to George's 
despatches for essentials in his own. And I believe 
that my friend would never have lost this "visual 
grip," but would have gone on putting it to what 
purpose he chose in very different work: work 

^ He can scarce have seen Mr. Kipling's journalistic 
achievement; for this was made accessible only (1899) 
when he (Steevens) was shut up in Ladysmith. Mr. Kip- 
ling, too, is only one of several; for Dickens was, at the 
writing of his 'Uncommercial Traveller,' the most brilliant 
and commanding literary figure of his time; so that his 
'Uncommercials,' though they were done for a weekly 
print (his own), were hardly journalism. A nearer par- 
allel is Ruskin, whose 'Modern Painters' (to name no 
more of his works), though it hath ever existed as a book, 
is obviously mere journalism; stufif done to-day and for- 
got (of the writer) to-morrow. 



MEMOIR xri 

other in scope, in practice, in design and in effect, 
than that which he did for the 'Daily Mail.' On 
that journal he had four years of active literary 
life. He began with New York and These States 
in general; he went on to tell how the Turk made 
hay of the Greek; he went to Egypt, and saw Sir 
Herbert triumph at the Atbara; he went to Egypt 
again, and, after Omdurman, passed to Khartum; 
he steamed east with Lord Curzon, and spread his 
big intelligence out over India under the British 
Raj; he went to South Africa, and there, having 
told us what he thought of things as he saw themi 
in the desperate leaguer in which he lost himself — 
there, I say, he died. I need not pass these books^ 
in review. I have, I think, stated their dominant 
literary quality. The presence of that quality made 
their author remarkable even to-day, when near 
everybody writes well, and some few write with dis- 
tinction. And behind it, as, having known the 
'Monologues' of old, and having been privileged to 
read, with other notes, as much as he did of his first 
essay in fiction, I can asseverate, without fear of 
repentance, that behind it all there was a fine ro- 
mantic imagination: even as, behind that, there 
was a capacity for high politics, which, had he but 

^ (i) The Land of the Dollar. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 
1896.) (2) With the Conquering Turk. (Edinburgh: 
Blackwood, 1897.) (3) Egypt in 1898. (Edinburgh: 
Blackwood, 1898.) (4) With Kitchener to Khartum. 
(Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1898.) (5) In India. (Edin- 
burgh: Blackwood, 1899.) (6) From Cape Town to 
Ladysmith. (Edinburgh: Blackwood, 1900.) 



xxii MEMOIR 

come out of Ladysmith, could not but have taken 
him far. 

V. 

The years of work and wandering that are repre- 
sented by these books of his — these books, so vivid, 
so instant, so actual — these years, I say, did much 
for him. They took him far out into the world; 
they filled his brain with facts and impressions, and 
greatened the capacities of his vision and his heart. 
He did nothing in them but it increased his reputa- 
tion, and enlarged his idea in the public fancy. He 
wrote for a round million, at least, of readers, and 
whatever he did for these was so well done that, 
when the million had found it good, he could appeal 
to the five thousand, or the live hundred, behind the 
million — even the five thousand, or the five hun- 
dred, who know — and count on their plaudits also. 
To his friends it was a great joy to see him thus 
conspicuous, and to know that all the while he was 
accomplishing himself, and through journalism 
making ready for the literature that in the long 
run was to be his sole employ. And his friends 
were fully justified of their content. They are few 
indeed, the youngsters, however brilliant and how- 
ever promising — the one by no means includes the 
other — who have such golden chances as fell ready 
to his hand. To begin with, that triumphing meta- 
morphosis, or avatar, of the 'Pall Mall Gazette': it 
was surely a distinction, as well as a right education, 



MEMOIR xxui 

almost from the first to live its full and vigorous 
and daring life, not as a thing outside but as an 
essential in its everyday economy. And then, the 
happiest of happy marriages achieved — the one 
woman found, and destiny to all appearances ful- 
filled — and then, I say, the experimental, novel, ir- 
resistible 'Daily Mail,' with its liberal and far-seeing 
Editor, and that gift of his in which were compre- 
hended America, Greece, Egypt, the Sudan, India, 
with Rennes and Bayreuth, and such "pretty tiny 
kickshaws" thrown in by the way? What better 
fortune could one have wished for the child of one's 
own loins? The misfortune was that, as I and an- 
other held, it was incomplete so long as it did not 
include South Africa.^ His opportunities had come 
hot-foot, each one hard at the other's heel. The old 
madman at Pretoria brought on this one also in, as 
it seemed, the nick of time, and, as we thought, to 
the notablest of purposes. And so it ended. He 
had a roving commission; and, being fey (for so 
I must think), he chose to shut himself up in Lady- 
smith. He might have gone whithersoever he 
would. But he would go nowhither else; and, 
having endured the leaguer until he got eaten up 
by the rust of it, as conducted by a parcel of folk 
who knew nothing about sieges, and were horribly 
afraid for their own skins, he took enteric fever — 
how, nobody knows — and came through it valiantly, 

* The other, who has a rare political gift, insisted on 
China also. As I write, it is being borne in upon me that 
he was right; but my prescience never got thus far. 



XXIV MEMOIR 

but died of it in the end — why, most can guess. 
'Twas, as he said, a "side-ways ending to it all." 
But it sufficed. By it he went from us; and now he 
rests in Ladysmith cemetery, seven thousand miles 
or so from Merton, where his heart lay, and from 
London, where he had lived the best of his life — 
the best as well as the most; and he had centred 
his ambitions there, and knew that there lived his 
friends. Withal he died as it were in public : much 
as Stevenson had died in the days when he himself 
was breaking ground. And the efifect of his be- 
reavement was found more shocking than the effect 
of that great and famous writer's own: great and 
far-reaching as we know that to have been. 'Twas 
as though he had become a part of the things he 
had chronicled: he had identified himself so keenly 
and so intimately with the greatness of England 
that, reporter as he was, he had come — for England 
is greater than mere art — to be her chosen craftsman. 
In any case, no death that one can recall in letters 
has so moved the English-speaking world as his, 
since Dickens stumbled upon "the cold and star- 
less road" full thirty years ago. Other and greater 
men have come and gone — have "one by one crept 
silently to rest" — in that long period of waste and 
growth, of increase and decay. But none had made 
himself known to such purpose and in such brief 
space as George Steevens, and of none could it be 
said, as was said of him, not once but many times: — 

"For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime, 
Young Lycidas, and hath not left his peer." 



MEMOIR XXV 

Lord Roberts, our "chief of men"; the famous cap- 
tain whom he had followed to Khartum, via Atbara 
and Omdurman; the august lady, whose subject 
he was proud to call himself — these all went mourn- 
ing for him; and with these all Ladysmith, where, 
in his high-hearted endeavour to "succour, help, 
and comfort all that were in danger, necessity, and 
tribulation," he had jested and smiled himself into 
the hearts of our sick and wounded, and had so 
borne himself under fire that the fighting men re- 
joiced to say that this was a man;i and with all 
Ladysmith a great part of the tremendous Empire 
to whose beginnings, as a right political unity, he 
was privileged to lend a hand. 



VL 

He had, as I've said, an admirable brain, a 
brain of the first magnitude as brains go: withal, a 
brain accomplished to the full, yet never a hair the 
worse for its accomplishing. Of what I believe to 
have been its master-quality — I mean, imagination 

^ Says a correspondent: — "At Eland's Laagte, Tinta 
Nyani, and Lombard's Kop he was usually walking about, 
close to the firing line, leading his grey horse, a conspicu- 
ous mark for every bullet." And another (Lynch of the 
'Illustrated London News') : — "I hope you will say this 
that G. W. Steevens was one of the very bravest men in 
Ladysmith. I don't suppose that any one here knows 
that at Eland's Laagte he went forward on horseback with 
the Highlanders, when every other man with a horse was 
dismounted." 



ixvi MEMOIR 

— we have the first sprightly runnings in his un- 
rivalled 'Monologues of the Dead' — a book, or I am 
mistaken, with a future; even as we have proof of 
other and lesser capacities in the several volumes of 
this Edition. But I do not think that any of these 
achievements in realisation and presentation show 
us anything of their Author's best. Of that there 
are not many traces in his printed work. Does 
a man's best ever get into his books? I do not think 
so; and I say that with some knowledge of litera- 
ture and men, and the certainty that, if I could now 
meet Shakespeare, I should wonder why he had de- 
clined upon such stuff as "Hamlet" and "Mac- 
beth." Brains apart, assuredly, the best of our 
dear George Steevens is not in his books. For one 
thing, he saw too easily, and wrote too brilliantly — 
he filled his Editor's bill too well; and for another, 
he had, I doubt not, too vigorous and lasting a 
sense of the virtue of privacy. And this brings me 
to my end. To realise George Steevens, you must 
put away everything but simplicity, kindness, sin- 
cerity. A serene and comely blending of these 
was so plain in him that you could see naught else. 
And, in fact, there was naught else to be seen. 
These were G. W. S., and he was ever these to his 
friends. "The rest is silence." W. E. H. 

Worthing, May-June, 1900. 



THINGS SEEN 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM.i 

In 1813 Elizabeth Fry, visiting Newgate, found 
women chained to the ground, lying in a dark cell, 
on straw changed once a week, clothed only in a 
petticoat, hardly visible for vermin. In 1897 a deer 
was impaled and killed during a run of the Royal 
Buckhounds. The epithets spattered over the latter 
fact by part of the public press in London would 
not have been at all inadequate as applied to the 
former. We read of "the terrible death of the 
deer," "the piteous story," the "brutal cruelties," 
"barbarities," and "atrocious incidents" of the hunt. 
Both Newgate and the Royal Buckhounds are pub- 
lic institutions, and the country is by way of being 
responsible for them. Yet Elizabeth Fry was held 
something of an eccentric for objecting to this form 
of the punishment of the guilty in Newgate ; while 
there are certainly hundreds, perhaps thousands, of 
people in Britain who hardly find the abuse above 
quoted sufilicient for the iniquities of the Buck- 
hounds. Concrete instances like this show such a 
change of sentiment well within the span of the 

'Blackwood's Magazine, January, 1898. 
1 



2 THINGS SEEN 

closing century as can only be called prodigiouso 
We say provisionally a change of public sentiment, 
and not of public morality ; for if it should turn out 
a question of morality, then we must conclude either 
that the contemporaries of Wellington and Peel 
were all devils or that the editor of the 'Star' is an 
angel. 

The root of the revolution lies in the respective 
values which two generations set upon physical 
pain. You will see the same even more clearly by 
going back another couple of generations to the 
days of Tom Jones or Roderick Random. "Coarse" 
and "brutal" are the epithets which our age selects 
for theirs. But again the root of the difference lies in 
the importance our modern fashionable sentiment — 
shall we say "fashionable cant" at once and be out 
with it ? — attaches to the avoidance of physical pain. 
Ensign Northerton was a brute in his day, and Tom 
Jones was a man ; in ours Tom is a brute and the 
Ensign a demon. It may be the essence of civilisa- 
tion or an accident of it ; but all our Victorian senti- 
ments, all our movements, all our humanitarianist 
talk, trend in one direction — towards the conviction 
that death and pain are the worst of evils, their 
elimination the most desirable of goods. 

To many people — so fast are we soddening with 
that materialism which calls itself humanity — this 
proposition about death and pain and their anti- 
theses will seem a truism. But perhaps some of 
them will falter in that belief when they see to what 
monstrosities this deification of painlessness can 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM 3 

give birth. It is throttling patriotism and com- 
mon-sense and virility of individual character; it is 
even stunting its own squat idol by taking away 
pain with one hand only to foster it with the other ; 
and, worst danger of all, its success means the de- 
struction of all manlier ideals of character than its 
own. 

Consider the gospel of painlessness in a few of 
its developments; and take first the simplest. 
Whence come the flaccid ideas of to-day in point 
of health and sickness? Why do we hatch out 
addled babies from incubators? Why does the 
'Daily Telegraph' endow cripples with Christmas 
hampers? In order, you would naturally answer, 
first, to bring into the world beings who must needs 
be a curse to themselves and to everybody about 
them; second, to persuade these beings that there 
is some kind of merit in being such a curse. 
Everybody who knows anything of working men's 
homes knows how proud of its deformity a cripple 
of that class can be, and how that pride is pandered 
to and even shared by all who can claim kinship 
with it. At a charitable Christmas entertainment 
held annually in the East End, it is the custom to 
put up the most misshapen cripples procurable to 
sing a hymn by themselves ; and the hideous exhibi- 
tion is by far the most popular turn of the evening. 
Now, nothing can be more rankly unwholesome 
than such a state of sentiment. It may be unjust 
to blame cripples ; it is as unjust and far fnore per- 
nicious, remembering that their case is nearly al- 



4 THINGS SEEN 

ways due to the vices or negligence of parents, 
to pamper them. Parents should be taught to be 
ashamed of crippled children. And children, both 
in this and higher states of life, ought to be taught 
to be proud of being well, not of being ill ; to be 
taught that sickness is not a source of interest, but 
a badge of inferiority; that to be healthy is the 
prime condition of all things desirable in life, and 
that the only way to palliate ill-health is to ignore it. 
Such an education might be trusted to breed healthy 
bodies controlled and mastered by healthy minds. 
But that would be blasphemy against the gospel 
of painlessness. Pain is to be assuaged if possible, 
but cockered in any case; to be pitied, advertised, 
rewarded — anything except silently endured. 

Moreover, this new humanitarianism is always 
conspicuously illogical in the working out of its 
own creed. Aiming at nothing higher than the 
extinction of pain, its disciples, by sheer feather- 
headedness, cause a great deal more suffering than 
they alleviate. It is too early to follow the after- 
life of the incubator-hatched baby; but it is fairly 
safe to predict that throughout a brief and puny 
life its unwholesomeness will mock the false hu- 
manity that would not let it die. As for the crip- 
ples, there is in Queen Square, Bloomsbury, a 
small, but very admirably managed, hospital for 
that branch of them which suffers from hip-disease. 
Now, if you are to cherish cripples, you would 
think that there could be no better way of doing 
so than this — the more so in that hip-disease is 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM 5 

both incurable and incapacitating. But no. That 
hospital, because it is quiet and no hand at adver- 
tising, is indigent to the point of shutting its doors ; 
whilst money flows in merrily to buy turkeys for 
other cripples' relatives' Christmas dinners. Per- 
haps the reason for the antithesis is that the object 
must not merely be an imperfect human being, but, 
in order to win full sympathy, must exhibit himself 
as such in public. 

Yet it may be neither by oversight nor by incon- 
sideration that this little hospital is starved. For 
you must know that among our humanitarians is a 
strong wing, which objects strenuously to hospitals 
altogether. It is an extraordinary irony that the self- 
sent apostles, whose mission is to do away with pain, 
should launch some of their finest diatribes against 
hospitals, which have no other mission in the world 
than themselves to combat pain. An extraordinary 
irony — but it is perfectly true, and the fact is very 
fruitful of enlightment. You will find in the writ- 
ings of these apostles attacks on the atrocities of 
hospitals set out with language almost too strong 
to be applied to a dead deer. Hospitals, they tell 
us, are shambles where human victims are vivi- 
sected for the curiosity, not to say the entertain- 
ment, of cold scientists. We are exhorted in fer- 
vent rhetoric to rise all together and stop the butch- 
ery of our fellow-men for a surgeon's holiday. This 
cry, which peals periodically from a part of the 
press of London, is almost the most instructive of 
all the manifestations of the new spirit. The sur- 



6 THINGS SEEN 

geon understands what he is doing with his pa- 
tient ; his detractors do not. His aim is ultimately 
the same as theirs — to eliminate pain from life; 
they can hardly dispute that. But just because he 
understands, because he takes a broad view, be- 
cause, without neglecting the individual case, he 
looks beyond it to principles which may prove of 
general beneficence — because of this he is next 
door to a murderer. Herein, not expressed but in- 
volved, you have the craven fear of pain in its naked 
simplicity. You must not cut to save a limb, to 
save a life, to save ten thousand lives — because we 
cannot bear to see the blood. Send out as many 
cripples, as many valetudinarians as you will — ^but 
we cannot bear to think of the supreme moment of 
kill or cure. Put us under morphia to muffle our 
pain, let a nurse sit holding our hand and stroking 
our forehead. But if you inflict one healing pang, 
exert one touch of salutary discipline, then you are 
no benefactor, but a heartless devil. 

The outcry against vaccination, against vivisec- 
tion, furnishes an exactly parallel case. The same sen- 
timent is at the heart of both — the unconquerable 
shrinking from initial pain, even though it promise 
to repay itself by tenfold exemption in the future. 
Of course the agitators against vaccination and vivi- 
section assure themselves that there are no repaying 
benefits to follow, and in a way they are sincere. 
But their sincerity is not that which comes from 
a cool-headed review of known facts ; it is the sin- 
cerity of an emotion which has overwhelmed reason. 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM 7 

An unbiassed deduction from the experience of 
smallpox epidemics, from the records of medical 
progress, must convince the most unwilling of us 
that the benefits of both vaccination and vivisection 
are real and appreciable. Whether they outweigh 
the death of a few weakly infants and the suffering 
of a few insensitive animals is another question — 
most people would readily answer it with a "Yes." 
The anti-vaccinators and anti-vivisectors might, on 
consideration, answer it with a "No." But the in- 
structive feature of their case is that they do not 
consider at all. They never get so far. The sight 
of the scabs on the baby's arm, the idea of the yelp- 
ing of a tortured dog — the first hint or imagining 
of physical pain — is enough to paralyse their reason. 
The same blind horror of physical pain may be 
found at the bottom of half the 'isms of the day. 
In almost all, when they are strongly felt, it seems 
actually to destroy reason till the fad contradicts 
itself — as, for one more example, in the vegetarian, 
who abstains from beef and chicken out of pity for 
bullocks and fowls, yet eats butter and eggs with- 
out ever asking to what fate he is thus dooming 
superfluous bull-calves and cockerels. The like 
unconscious self-condemnation awaits our humani- 
tarians when they pass from the domain of physical 
to that of moral incapacity. Nowhere do they show 
their sentimentality and their unreason better com- 
bined than in what is called prison-reform. A plain 
man who sees the warm, airy, light, clean cells 
of British prisons is apt to ask himself wherein, but 



8 THINGS SEEN 

for the necessary loss of liberty, the hardship of 
punishment consists. Let him turn to the ex- 
ponents of painlessness and he will discover that 
our prisons also, as well as our hospitals, are dens 
of hideous cruelty. When he tries to find out what 
it is all about, he discovers that some prisoners have 
meagre fare, that a fevv^ are set to really hard phys- 
ical work, that convicts spend a small part of their 
sentence without constant companionship, that hab- 
itual insubordinates can, on a magistrate's order, be 
whipped with a whipcord cat, and that warders do 
not always speak to convicts with respect. This is 
called cruel, tending to madness, brutalising. Our 
grandfathers would have laughed at such charges. 
Such cruelty, they would have replied, would come 
not amiss to wife-beaters, ravishers, swindlers ; if a 
man goes mad in nine months, although he can 
constantly speak to his fellow-prisoners at exercise 
or when at work about the corridors, then his 
mental balance is no loss to himself or anybody; the 
very cat can hardly brutalise him, since he has to be 
brutal before he could earn it. But such replies are 
not for our soft-hearted generation. Instead they 
point us westward to free America, whose felons, as 
a native authority has said, are "better housed, fed, 
clad, and comforted than the labouring poor of any 
other portion of the globe" ; whose housebreakers 
feed on beef-steaks and hot biscuits for breakfast, 
and street-walkers get jam to their tea. They 
point us to Elmira, that university miscalled a 
prison, where the embezzler is taught German, 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM 9 

shorthand, and telegraphy, and the disguise-artist is 
encouraged to model in wax. 

It is all one more outcrop of exactly the same 
folly. Avoid immediate pain — no matter at what 
cost hereafter. And here again the folly is exactly 
as ironically self-destroying. It would be absurd 
to ask whether criminals inflict or suffer the more 
pain. It may be all one to you whether pain be de- 
served or not ; to save the guilty the greater suffer- 
ing, you may, as would willingly many ot our 
crack-brained sentimentalists, inflict the lesser upon 
the innocent. But this is exactly what they do not 
do ; to save the guilty the lesser evil, they plague the 
guiltless with the greater. In point of fact, the 
modern vice of pampering criminals may fairly be 
held to cause greater inconvenience both to the in- 
nocent victims and to the interesting agents. For 
laxity does not reform. It was supposed that the 
University Extension course of Elmira did prevent 
those who had experienced it from returning for a 
further term of instruction ; only one day it came 
out that the lectures on Moral Philosophy were 
supplemented by smacking with a sort of butter- 
patter, and we may fairly attribute the deterrent 
effect to the bodily influence rather than the spir- 
itual. For the rest, crime increases in lax America. 
In Great Britain — severe by comparison with 
America, though lax enough when you consider 
the punishments of former days — crime is decreas- 
ing. The only other European country of which 
you can say the same is Belgium, where our hu- 



lO THINGS SEEN 

manitarians will hold up horrified hands to hear 
that sentences of nine years' solitary confinement 
are enforced, and that a sort of convalescent prison 
is needed to bring the criminal gradually back to 
his reason. No such barbarity for us ! Among us 
you will find a tumult of voices ever crying aloud 
for less, not more, severity. And, so far as crime 
can be checked or encouraged by punishment, they 
are asking for reforms that will spread crime, in- 
volve more frequent if less sure terms of detention 
for criminals, and thus add prodigiously to the sum- 
total of suffering among guilty and guiltless alike. 
Here once more the gospel of painlessness recoils 
to its own defeat. 

Nowhere will you find the new doctrine better 
exemplified than in politics. It is a guiding prin- 
ciple of that school which delights to cry down Brit- 
ish methods, British policy, British achievements. 
If pain, as such, is the one great evil, it is all one 
vvhose pain it is. There is no more distinction be- 
tween your own countrymen and another. There 
is no more tragedy in the death of your country- 
man doing his duty than in the death of an Orukzai 
who shoots his uncles from behind walls. There is 
no such possibility as patriotism left. You will start 
reasonably enough ; the true patriot, you will say, 
desires the highest good of his country, which is 
not to be found in killing Orukzais; and though 
you hold an Orukzai's life just as high as a Gordon 
Highlander's, you do not hold it a whit higher. An 
Armenian is a human life and a Turk is a human 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM II 

life, and the one is as precious as the other. You 
may start with these plausible principles, but you 
will not maintain them. The very friction with 
your simpler fellows, who hold any one British 
life worth any half-dozen others, will irritate your 
theoretic philanthropy into a steady prepossession 
against your own countrymen. The sight of any 
man violating your precept will stir your humane 
indignation to a bloodthirsty desire for the suffering 
of the violator. This is called righteous anger, but 
in its effects, had it but free play, it is the old irony 
— ^^humanitarianism defeating its own end. What 
better instance than the Anglo-Armenians, who 
first fanatically swallow oriental tales of outrage, 
then frantically exaggerate and agitate till they have 
stirred the half truth into hideous reality ; then they 
are for war and slaughter, as though a stream of 
blood were to be slaked by a deluge. The pro- 
fessed war-haters have been of late the very men 
who cry most savagely for a war more deadly than 
a century of barbarous faction-fighting. The party 
of force-at-no-price, of abstract quixotic justice, is 
the first to find unsuspected — and non-existent — 
points in favour of the United States when the 
Republic makes baseless claims on their own coun- 
try and backs them by unmannerly bluster. It must 
be so inevitably. No man is so superhuman in his 
dry intelligence that he can keep a principle impar- 
tially applied to affairs that stir the passions of na- 
tions. And he that is not with his country is 
against it. 



12 THINGS SEEN 

Perhaps these are illustrations enough. It is not 
alleged that the various modern tendencies here 
touched on are all ramifications of a gigantic con- 
spiracy labouring to impose its formula on the 
world. They have their family likeness and their 
mutual sympathies, but their fundamental unity is 
unconscious. Yet that fundamental unity exists; 
the elevation of pain and — not pleasure, mark, but 
— the absence of pain into the ultimate standards 
of evil and good. Applied without common-sense 
or self-control, it is plain that this standard works 
its own undoing. But that, it will be urged, is no 
valid aspersion on the standard itself. Would not 
the test of avoidance of pain, honestly and judi- 
ciously apphed, furnish a trustworthy guide for 
pubHc action? Does not civilisation itself consist 
exactly in this — in an organised common effort for 
the extinction, so far as is attainable, of pain and 
of death ? 

Certainly there is a measure of truth in this. The 
organisation of a civilised State is a vast conspiracy 
for the preservation of life. A rank socialist might 
see his way to denying this ; yet it rem.ains undeni- 
able that even for the lowest, weakest, and poorest 
a modern civilised State gives such security of life 
as the low and weak and poor know in no^ other 
form of society. Civilisation lays a restraining hand 
on the strong and bold, who would bully us ; it fur- 
nishes great devices and combinations v/hereby we 
may win comforts from nature which without them 
would be too hard for us. It finds incubators to 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM 13 

help us into the world, and disinfectants to keep 
us from helping our fellows out of it. 

Certainly civilisation does all this. And yet there 
is no divine virtue in civilisation, either the word or 
the thing. If civilisation is a conspiracy for the 
preservation of puny Hfe, lowering the physical 
standard of the race, then civilisation may be no 
blessing, but a curse. Civilisation, further, is not 
only not divine ; it is human. If its broad and gen- 
eral tendencies are unrecognised by those in the 
stream of them, they are not less products of hu- 
man will. We can change or guide the stream of 
civilisation, after all ; it behooves us the more, there- 
fore, to look anxiously to its direction. 

The present direction in Britain appears on the 
above showing to be a wrong one ; if we are not 
careful it will lead us straight to national perdition. 
Civilisation is making it much too easy to live ; hu- 
manitarianism is turning approval of easiness of 
living into the one standard of virtue. A wiser 
civilisation would look, not to the indiscriminate 
preservation of life, but to the quality of the life pre- 
served. A wiser humanitarianism would make it 
easy for the lower quality of life to die. It sounds 
brutal, but why not ? We have let brutality die out 
too much. Our horror of pain has led us to foster 
only the softer virtues and leave the harsher alone. 
Again, it sounds absurd even to use such a phrase 
as "harsher virtues" — though Aristotle, to take one 
instance of a man perhaps as wise as we, knew very 
well what they are. His ideal of character was not 



14 THINGS SEEN 

the kind man, nor the man opposed to corporal 
punishment, nor the man superior to mere patriot- 
ism, but the great-souled man. This quaUty is "the 
crown of all virtues ; it enhances them, and cannot 
begin to exist without them," And among the at- 
tributes of the great-souled man were these. He 
was the man "who holds himself worthy of great 
deserts, and is so worthy. . . , The great- 
souled man despises justly, whereas the crowd des- 
pises at haphazard. To be respected by the lowly 
he holds as vulgar as to use his strength against the 
weak. ... In his life he takes no heed of any 
but his friends ; to do otherwise is servile ; 
which is why all flatterers are coarse and all the 
lowly are flatterers. . . . He is no gossip ; he will 
tattle neither of himself nor of others, for it is all 
one to him whether others praise or condemn 
him." 

Nobody wants to re-establish a Greek stand- 
ard of character for British men — the less so in that 
its results as handed down by the Greeks them- 
selves are not overworthy of admiration. Never- 
theless we might well admit these heathen virtues 
of proper pride and a sort of self-respecting egoism, 
and others, as a bracing tonic to our later morality. 
We ought not to forget to temper mercy with jus- 
tice — even with that rude and brutal exercise of su- 
periority which may be called natural justice. It 
was not by holding all men — not to say all beasts 
— as of equal right with ourselves that we made 
ourselves a great nation. It is not thus that we 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM 15 

keep ourselves great. We became and are an Im- 
perial race by dealing necessary pain to other men, 
just as we become powerful men by dealing neces- 
sary pain to other animals — whether they be 
slaughtered oxen or hunted stags. There is no rea- 
son in gloating over the pain we have risen upon, 
but there is even less in pretending that it does 
not exist. We may as well recognise that if we 
are to remain, nationally and individually, fitted to 
cope successfully with nature, with rival animals 
and with rival men, we must find and observe some 
other virtues besides those which consist in com- 
bating pain. Already our gentler civilisation has 
softened us physically. We make bicycle records, 
but we are not prepared to converse coolly while 
having our legs cut off, as was the way of our 
great-grandfathers. We are better fed, better 
clothed, better housed than they were; probably we 
enjoy better health, and certainly we live longer. 
But we do not drink so well, love so well, suffer so 
well, fight so well; physically and emotionally we 
have subdued ourselves to a lower plane. Partly 
this follows inevitably on alleviated material con- 
ditions which we could not put back if we would; 
but partly it is due to the softening of our cur- 
rent ethics. It is believed in our generation that 
men who are ready to inflict pain are precisely the 
men who are unready to endure it, though, curi- 
ously, that same generation refuses to flog wife- 
beaters and assaulters of children. In their case 
the principle may be broadly true; but it was not 



l6 THINGS SEEN 

true of our forefathers — Covenanters, buccaneers, 
politicians, sailors, pitmen; what you will. They 
burned and marooned and beheaded and shot and 
fought cocks; but they were quite ready to bear 
the hke sufferings when their turn came. So they 
bred hardihood ; yet, brutes as you may call them, 
they still continued to be not less generous, loving, 
even self-sacrificing, than we. Within the limits 
they recognised as claiming their duty — family, 
friends, country — they could be all sweetness ; out- 
side they could be pitiless. On these painfully 
unhumanitarian principles they built the British 
Empire. 

At present we keep it on these principles — only 
we try not to let ourselves know it. We shoot 
down dervishes who are fighting for their religion 
as sincerely as did our own Ironsides, and Matabele 
who have every whit as pure a belief in the 
righteousness of slave-raiding as we in its iniquity ; 
we drive Afridis into the bitter snow to starve 
because they think it well to steal rifles and shoot 
strangers, while we do not. The naked principle 
of our rule is that our way is the way that shall 
be walked in, let it cost what pain it may. Mean- 
time our humanitarians preach exactly the contrary. 
And if they are right we have two courses before 
us. Either we may go on, as now, conducting our 
Empire by force, and pretend that we do so by 
charity and meekness ; or we may cease to conduct 
it by force, and try to do so by charity and meek- 
ness. In the first case we shall finally engrain 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM 17 

hypocrisy as the dominant trait of our national 
character; in the second we shall very soon have 
no national character or national self-esteem or 
national existence to lose. 

As the savage virtues die out, the civilised vices 
spring up in their place. Pride gives way to the 
ambition to be thought to have a right to be proud ; 
frank contempt and hatred are replaced by back- 
biting. The readiness to hurt or be hurt physically 
we exchange for a smoother but deadlier unscrupu- 
lousness. The duel was hissed out of England 
because it killed the body; in its stead reigns 
scandal, which kills the soul. Sport, which slaugh- 
ters beasts, is yielding to betting on professional 
athletics, which fritters away the minds of men. As 
we become more sensitive to physical, we become 
more callous to mental agony. An educated woman, 
a woman in society, a good woman, will whimper 
for a week if her child is to have a mole cut from 
its cheek, and cannot bear to see the operation, 
lest she should faint at the sight of blood. But she 
will dress herself carefully and attend a trial for 
murder, dividing her opera-glass impartially, while 
the jury are away, between such part of the face of 
the accused as he cannot cover with his hands and 
the face of his wife. And yet, when that man is 
proved a cold-blooded murderer, this good woman 
will be the first to shudder at the reflection that he 
is to be hanged. We talk of our age as spiritual, 
but what is this but gross materialism ? Pain is no 
longer to be considered unless it can be felt with the 



l8 THINGS SEEN 

body. So, while we shudder at the pains of a small 
war, and would go to almost any humiliation to 
avert a great one, we are every year more in bond- 
age to industrial strife — to the blind selfishness 
of the locker-out and the malignant factiousness 
of the trade-unionist. Here is more materialism : 
death is not death unless you can see the bleeding 
bodies. But then, of course, industrial war only 
ruins our country: the other kind of war might 
hurt foreigners. For — deplorably, perhaps, but in- 
contestably — the content of the human affections 
is limited ; and the more love we spare for men of 
other race and speech and colour, the less we have 
left for our own. 

And what a pitiful spirit in itself, this new crusade 
against pain! It is not the cult of pleasure, — that 
its votaries would be the first to disclaim. It is a 
creed purely negative — a creed, therefore, inferior 
to the merest Epicureanism. A moral code that is 
positive is at least a creed that makes a man more of 
a man ; a code that is all negative — all antis and no 
pros — makes nothing but a protesting machine — a 
string of self-righteous formulas. We must not hurt 
stags, and we must not whip criminals, and we must 
not, it now appears, cut out cancers ; but what may 
we do? Attend League football matches, teach 
garrotters moral philosophy, and dose the cancerous 
with homoeopathic globules? The substitutes are 
inadequate enough ; but to do justice to those whom 
we are protesting against, it is not they who propose 
such substitutes. Faddists propose many ridiculous 



THE NEW HUMANITARIANISM IQ 

remedies for imaginary diseases; but the newest 
kind of sentimental humanitarian is not necessarily 
or even generally a faddist. He or she has simply 
a vague shudder at the thought of pain, and often 
backs it up by no fad or positive suggestion at all ; 
it is merely a sentiment without principle. Only 
that sentiment is coming more and more to suffuse 
and to inspire all our British thought — the shudder 
is beginning to be accepted instead of a code of 
morality. It is all for forbidding and no permitting, 
for undoing and no doing, for an abstract average 
common weal, but no concrete individual weal. It 
tends towards a compact by which we shall all of us 
covenant to do nothing lest one of us might hurt 
another. It is not the frame of mind which makes 
great fortunes, or great nations, or great men. No; 
nor even good men. Unless a good man is good in 
quite another way from a good horse or a good 
table, he is not a man who most fully embodies the 
properties of a man ; which object is assuredly not 
attained by the mere refusal to give or suffer pain. 
Goodness is difficult to define, and still more diffi- 
cult to dogmatise about, but it is at least safe to say 
that it consists in action, not in abstinence from 
action. To suppose it lies in a negative, even of 
the most amiable kind, is an emasculation of the 
word fit only to produce a nation of blameless, 
praiseless nobodies, "It is our sins that make us 
great." 

The idea that pain is the worst of evils destroys 
many virtues which we cannot afford to lose; it 



20 THINGS SEEN 

fosters many vices which we could gratefully spare ; 
it is a bloodless, unfruitful basis for morality. And 
for the last point, it is in most cases — not in all, but 
in most — a lie. The people that pretend to elevate 
it to a principle do not really believe it. Out of 
paradox, out of moral self-conceit, out of genuine 
tenderness of heart, they may say they do ; but at 
heart they generally do not. How many genuinely 
believe, and practically enforce the belief, that a 
beast's pain should outweigh a man's profit? How 
many genuinely believe that a wife-beater should 
not be beaten ? How many truly think that it is as 
deplorable that an Afridi should be shot as that 
a Briton should ? There are some such possibly : 
you will know them by their refusal to drink milk, 
their habit of allowing themselves to be pushed in a 
crowd without pushing back, their readiness to give 
their daughters in marriage to savages. With the 
rest humanitarianism is not a principle, but a weak- 
ness. It is even a vicarious cowardice. By sympathy 
they transfer the pain of others to themselves, and 
their pity is not benevolence, but dislike of sensa- 
tions painful to themselves. Now it is nobody's 
duty to like painful sensations ; but in a world full 
of them and for all we can see inevitably full of 
them, it is everybody's duty to face them. To refuse 
to do so will certainly do little enough towards their 
extinction. And to the few who do honestly try 
to abolish the painful as such, we may make bold 
to say that, should they succeed, mankind would 
be poorer, weaker, and even unhappier without it. 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON.^ 

.. . . The close of the nineteenth century beheld 
the British Empire at the highest pitch of its pros- 
perity. The records of every contemporary nation 
celebrate, while they envy, the multitude of its 
subjects and the orderly feHcity of its citizens. Its 
frontiers comprehended the fairest regions of the 
earth; and its authority extended alike over the 
most dutiful of daughter-peoples and the wildest 
and most sequestered barbarians. The judicious 
delegation of the minor prerogatives of government 
conciliated the free affections of the Colonies ; and 
the ruder dependencies were maintained in con- 
tented, if unenthusiastic, submission by the valour, 
the conduct, and the impartial justice of their alien 
administrators. Two centuries of empire had 
seemed insufficient to oppress or enervate the virile 
and adventurous spirit of the British race. It 
tempted the ardours of the Sudan sun at midsum- 
mer, and cheerfully sustained the rigours of the 
icy winter of the Klondyke. While the hardy 
soldier defended and continually propagated the 
distant boundaries of Victoria's dominions, the tran- 
quil and prosperous state of the British Islands was 
deeply felt, if grudgingly admitted, by every class of 
their population. There, if anywhere on the earth, 

^Blackwood's Magazine, February, 1899. 
21 



22 THINGS SEEN 

was to be found wholesome public feeling untainted 
by faction and wealth, unobnoxious to jealousy. The 
distinction of Conservative and Liberal preserved 
the name of party government without its sub- 
stance ; and the purely formal opposition of denom- 
inations, rather than of principles, served as a useful 
check on the dominant party without risk of cata- 
clysm in the general policy of the State. The ex- 
ample of France, her secular enemy, emphasised 
the just complacency with which Britain seemed 
to regard her condition. The republic groaned 
under an alteration of licence and tyranny; the 
monarchy breathed freely in the reasonable ac- 
ceptance of laws, enacted honestly for the general 
good and applied indifferently by judges of grave 
sacrosancity. In her foreign relations France al- 
ternately intrigued and precipitately withdrew 
from the consequences of her duplicity; Britain 
pursued her designs with unyielding tenacity, but in 
uninjurious silence. Unvexed by the conscription 
which weighed upon their neighbors, and secure in 
the protection of their invincible navy, the people 
affected the arts of peace, and received the accus- 
tomed reward of a single devotion. The workshop 
of the world since two generations, Britain neither 
dreaded the competition of strangers nor listened 
to the cautions of the more sagacious of her own 
children. The Recessional of the sublime Kipling 
and the economic speculations of the inquisitive but 
censorious Mallock fell alike unheeded on the ears 
of those who were content to argue that the con- 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON 23 

idition of the lower orders, though insufficient to 
their own appetence, was luxurious compared to 
that of their fellows abroad, while the easy splen- 
dour of the rich inflamed the emulation of all man- 
kind; and that the public exchequer supported 
with facility all burdens which the ever-increasing 
exigencies of the Empire might impose. 

It was scarcely possible that the eyes of contem- 
poraries should discern in the public felicity the 
latent causes of decay and corruption. To the vul- 
gar mind the British Empire was a triumphant 
proof of the possibility, as of the blessings, of a wise 
democracy; yet in that very process of democracy 
were inherent the seeds of ruin. In the domain of 
Government the political genius of the Anglo- 
Saxon race, its bias toward compromise and de- 
testation of extremity, surmounted with impunity 
experiments that would have proved fatal to any 
other people less singularly endowed. But while 
the leaders of the nation were satisfied with pro- 
moting or seeking to retard the popular encroach- 
ment upon the functions of government, democracy 
infused a slower and more secret poison into the 
vitals of society. If the opinion of the vulgar was 
unacknowledged in Parliament, in every other de- 
partment of life it insensibly permeated the whole 
spirit of the people. It became a maxim of Im- 
perial policy, a law of social development, a canon 
of taste. The Englishman of the beginning of the 
nineteenth century was accustomed to demand that 
his policy should be glorious, the accessories of his 



24 THINGS SEEN 

daily life unsurpassed in quality, the objects of his 
sesthetic admiration beautiful. The Englishman of 
the end of that period of decadence was content if 
they were cheap. 

The student of that age will find melancholy 
evidence of degeneration in the printed records, and 
especially in the newspapers, of the time. The re- 
ported speeches of public men, the venal arguments 
of leader-writers, the tattling of the parasites of 
fashion, the statistics of the markets, the very 
advertisements, bear unanimous testimony to the 
debased ideas which then enjoyed a ready and un- 
protested currency. The Empire, that magnificent 
fabric founded upon the generous impulse to con- 
quer and to rule, was now formally regarded as a 
mere machine for the acquisition of pounds sterling. 
A Palmerston and a Disraeli had been the spokes- 
men of the earlier Imperialism ; the later found its 
apt mouthpiece in a Chamberlain. The masterful 
truculence of the British gentleman and the opulent 
imagination of the Anglicised Jew this generation 
cheerfully exchanged for the ambitions of a manu- 
facturer fostered by the arts of a demagogue. 
Gifted with an extraordinary intuition of the chang- 
ing predilections of his countrymen. Chamberlain 
was enabled to turn, to the advantage of his own 
popularity, the flood of patriotism which rose in the 
decade between the first and second Jubilees of 
Queen Victoria. He became the high-priest of 
what was fondly saluted as the new Imperialism, on 
the lips of whose votaries British Empire was 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON 25 

synonymous with British commerce. His declama- 
tions, while they will reward the curious investigator 
with little that is either original in thought or ele- 
gant in expression proclaim but too eloquently the 
altered feelings with which the later Britons re- 
garded their greatness. Where they had once re- 
solved to possess, they now aspired but to trade. 

The jargon of the day clamoured for "the open 
door," by which phrase was understood a market 
which British products could enter on terms of 
fiscal equality with those of the rest of the world. 
In the manlier age of Drake and Hawkins Britain 
had opened her own door for herself; now her 
diplomacy all but petitioned for an equality of 
treatment which the growing incapacity of her 
own traders must, in any event, have rendered 
fruitless. Among the strange ironies which the 
historian of this period finds himself compelled 
to record, none is more deeply ironical than the 
fact that, in proportion as the nation came to re- 
gard commerce as its highest and only weal, so 
commerce itself lost vitality and astuteness. The 
degeneracy of the people spread to that very 
activity to which they had sacrificed their nobler 
sentiments of empire; and while arms and justice, 
arts and letters, were postponed in the general esti- 
mation to manufacture and trade, these mercenary 
avocations were themselves pursued without energy 
and almost without common shrewdness. Like 
the ostrich of mythology, her head buried in the 
sand of obsolete traditions and antiquated success, 



26 THINGS SEEN 

Britain alone of the nations of Europe refused to 
educate her commercial travelers or to accede to 
the terms of payment required by her customers, 
clung to her chaotic weights and measures, and 
haughtilyannouncedtothe world that it must forego 
such goods as its wants demanded, and purchase 
only what Britain was pleased to sell. In Germany, 
in Belgium, and in the United States sprang up 
keen and victorious competition; and though the 
vast wealth of England was as yet almost unim- 
paired, a few sagacious minds, while impartially 
blind to the more fatal deterioration of the nation's 
spirit, were already enabled to foresee and to pre- 
dict the approaching disasters to its traffic. 

At the same time, as it was thus sought, by 
menace or persuasion, to extend the principles of 
free trade abroad, at home they were eating, like 
a deep and consuming canker, into the very marrow 
of Britain. The insidious principles of Bright 
and Cobden had made her the workshop of the 
whole world ; but they brought to her the physical 
debility of the workman as well as his wages. 
The profits of the manufacturer and the cheap 
food of the operative were paid for by the starva- 
tion of the hind, the bankruptcy of the farmer, and 
the ruin of the landowner. On every industrial 
benefit followed an agricultural calamity; and the 
prosperity of the town was remorselessly attended 
by the beggary of the hamlet. The movement 
of the population accompanied, as in every age, the 
distribution of wealth ; so that the towns distended 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON 2y 

to cities and the hamlets disappeared in a wilder- 
ness. 

The effects of life in cities were apparent and 
pernicious. But for the unbroken attestation of 
both printed and pictured records, it would be 
difficult indeed to credit the full horrors exhibited 
by such districts as Lancashire or the Black Coun- 
try at the end of the nineteenth century. There the 
wildest flights of hyperbole were equaled and ex- 
ceeded by dismal truth, and the sun was literally 
obscured at noonday. A host of ungainly chimneys 
loaded the air with poisonous fumes which op- 
pressed the hardiest species of vegetation. The 
inhabitants, penned up by day in close factories or 
the dimmer and more stifling obscurity of mines, 
herded by night in crowded tenements, were pale, 
sickly and meagre; and, by a malignant decree of 
nature, the species became more prolific in propor- 
tion as they transmitted less vigour to their off- 
spring. The philosopher of that age observed that 
the immigrant countrymen supported the unwhole- 
some conditions of the towns better than the 
feebler natives, and that their superior robustness 
conferred an advantage in the competition for em- 
ployment; but the second and third generations 
dissolved away in equal langour under the pestilent 
circumstances of an unnatural existence. The 
momentary profit of the fathers was visited in de- 
bility on the children, and served only to precipitate 
the speed of his hideous process of degeneration. 

The universal experience of mankind confirms 



28 THINGS SEEN 

the opinion that the sole defence of a nation against 
external enmity lies in the preservation of a robust 
and high-spirited peasantry. The British farm- 
laborer had found himself naturally possessed of 
many of the qualities requisite for a soldier. His 
form was vigorous, and inured to hardship and 
privation. He had a natural habit of obedience, 
and in many instances was already proficient in 
the use of weapons and accustomed by the pursuit 
of game to the simpler operations of war. The 
children of the factory, from whom it now became 
necessary to recruit the army, had none of these 
capacities ; they were feeble in body, insubordinate 
in temper, and habituated by experience to a mode 
of life which rendered them awkward and discon- 
tented in the field. As yet, however, the British 
army showed but few signs of deterioration from 
the standards of its glorious history. The courage 
of its legionaries was unbroken, and its officers, 
besides training them in peace and leading them in 
war with matchless courage and coolness, found 
superfluous energy to raise and discipline auxiliary 
troops hardly, if at all, inferior to the British regi- 
ments themselves. Northern India and the basins 
of the Upper Nile and Niger supplied excellent 
soldiers, who proved their valour and endurance in 
all the wars of the end of the nineteenth century. 
They constituted the major part of the successful 
expeditions to Tirah, to Khartum, and to Bida; 
but the very strength they brought to British arms 
was an insidious source of decline. As the warlike 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON 29 

Spirit and manly force of the white races succumbed 
to the enervating influence of industrial civilisation, 
the Government of London relied more and more 
on the martial virtue of its subject barbarians. 
These, whether in India or Africa, were as for- 
ward in the field as the British regiments, and 
undertook, almost unaided by them, the necessary 
fatigues which contribute even more than the 
sword to the successful prosecution of a campaign. 
It was perhaps an inevitable consequence of the 
imperial fate which impelled Britons to make war 
in every clime; since the severities of the Afghan 
winter, which chilled the courage of the British 
troops, were scarcely felt by the hardy children 
of Nepaul; while the Sudanese and Hausas, in 
their turn, were better able to resist the beams of 
an African sun. But it was significant, if as yet 
unnoticed, that the masters of the Empire grew 
either less able or less willing to risk their own 
troops in its unhealthier regions, and were yearly 
more disposed to delegate their defence to a mer- 
cenary army. The indomitable spirit of the English 
gentleman prompted him to seek martial enter- 
prises at the head of the alien levies, whose con- 
tinual service proffered the fairest chance of action 
and honour ; and the mass of the people, reheved of 
the cares of personal service, sank contentedly into 
the languid indifference of civil life. Black men 
and brown men, flanked with an increasingly in- 
considerable proportion of white troops, won the 
British victories; and the cheaply fed British citi- 



30 THINGS SEEN 

zens were content to sit and acclaim their prowess 
from the galleries of the music halls. 

In sport, as in its analogue, war, the British 
degenerated with frightful rapidity. The very 
word had lost its original connotation ; and the 
honourable name proper to the manly exercises 
of hunting, shooting and fishing, whose charm 
consists in matching man's strength and cunning 
against that of wild nature, was usurped by childish 
or plebeian exhibitions of mere brute strength and 
agility. The Briton found his pleasure in bestriding 
a bicycle instead of a horse, in striking a tennis-ball 
instead of a wild-fowl ; nor was he even sensible of 
the degradation that could prefer a mechanical toy 
to a living creature with a will independent of, yet 
conformable to, his own. Even the older and more 
reputable games, like cricket, football, and skittles, 
which might have defended themselves as affording 
at least a semblance of wholesome activity to the 
youth of towns, were turned by a truly devilish 
ingenuity into engines of enervation and decay. It 
ceased to be fashionable to join personally in these 
spasmodic but active pastimes. The populace 
thronged to them in thousands, but only to pay for 
the privilege of witnessing as lazy spectators recrea- 
tions which were fondly called national. Some of 
these exhibitions were more than merely effemi- 
nate; active corruption was added in allurements 
to drunkenness, and in a factious partisanship 
which sometimes blew up to brutal assaults on the 
umpires of the game, and was always a fertile 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON 3^ 

source of gambling. In their amusements, as in 
their wars, Britons ceased to play a personal part, 
finding a substitute for the vigorous sports of their 
fathers in the force and address of well-paid mer- 
cenaries, which in a more strenuous age would have 
rebuked the insolent softness of those who pam- 
pered them. 

Personal force and military hardihood were the 
price which Britain paid for cheap imported food; 
the other cheap commodities in which the people 
delighted were purchased at a no less ruinous rate. 
In every department of social life the tendency of 
this age was the same, leading to the concentration 
of every industry into huge establishments con- 
trolled by a few heads, and succeeding, by the pre- 
ponderance of their resources, in underselling the 
enterprises of small private traders. The Lon- 
doner of this period bought his food, his clothing, 
his furniture, his books and newspapers, his very 
tobacco, from companies, stores, and amalgama- 
tions, which counted the volume of their traffic by 
millions and their profits by hundreds of thousands 
of pounds, their emporia by scores, and their em- 
ployees by thousands. The tradesmen of t!ie pre- 
ceding generation were thankful to become the 
managers and the shopwalkers of their inflated sup- 
planters, and earned a livelihood by disposing of 
goods for their masters at a third of the price they 
had formerly asked and obtained for themselves. 
The plausible sophistries of political economy cele- 
brated the commercial revolution as a triumph of 



32 THINGS SEEN 

the division of labour; but its moral effect on the 
people was as far-reaching as it was pernicious. 
Commercial power, hitherto divided with an ap- 
proach to equality among a thousand merchants, 
now rested with a few groups, who absorbed and 
magnified the profits due to the labours of their 
subordinates. On these the status of inferiority, 
without responsibility or opportunity, worked its 
necessary effect; they no longer possessed that 
vigour of character which is nourished by the con- 
sciousness of self-dependence and the habit of in- 
dividual judgment. When, as became ever more 
frequent, a great business was in the control of 
a limited company, the rigour of subordination 
verged upon the hopelessness of serfdom. The 
clerk of a personal employer might aspire for a 
partnership, and confidently demand humanity; 
but the servant of a body of directors sighed in 
vain for a position either of authority or of reason- 
able comfort. In this organisation of business, 
the peculiar product of the Victorian age, the sense 
of responsibility slipped from the directors as from 
the directed; it was not their concern, so they 
■argued, if employees were underpaid or the public 
cheated ; all that was done was in the name and the 
interests of the shareholders. These, in their turn, 
passing back their consciences to the directors, 
were satisfied to cloak their vicarious wickedness 
with a convenient ignorance. 

While the fires of ambition were extinguished in 
the breasts of the lower, and the voice of conscience 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON 33 

silenced among the higher, circles of commerce, a 
particular corruption was reserved for the con- 
sumers. The wives of artisans and labourers had 
hitherto looked to their own industry for the cloth- 
ing of themselves and their children, — as the 
smaller conveniences of the slender household had 
been made in moments of leisure by the labour of 
the husband. The new methods of trading cheap- 
ened everything, and especially clothing, to a price 
within the compass of the poorest ; but in doing so 
it rudely broke the tie which bound the lower 
classes to their homes. The wife, who had been 
wont to pass the evening in the manufacture of gar- 
ments for her children, now bought them at some 
great emporium; and, emancipated at once from 
the necessity of work and the practice of frugality, 
devoted the evenings to idle gossip or empty 
frivolity. On her trivial excursions she v/ould be 
accompanied by her young children, which exposed 
their delicate immaturity to cold at the hours when 
it should have been fortified by sleep. The hus- 
band and father, no longer finding in his home the 
companionship craved by his brief hours of relaxa- 
tion, sought it with better success at one of the 
gaudy public-houses, whose lights at the corner of 
every street attested the vices and the misfortunes 
of the poor. The happy home of the British 
plebeian passed from a reality to a proverb and 
from a proverb to a fable, and the fair picture of the 
past gave place to a blur of drunkenness, indolence, 
and disease. 



34 THINGS SEEN 

The prevailing deterioration, which did not over- 
look the lowest, fastened greedily upon the highest 
ranks of the population. The Court, as a standard 
of polite manners, had almost ceased to exist. The 
retired life of the venerable Victoria during her 
later years left the leadership of fashion vacant, and 
the landed nobility was too impoverished, as well as 
too proud, to struggle for the vicegerency. The 
field of so-called society was left open to any ad- 
venturer with the effrontery to usurp it. Thus 
arose an inner circle of fashion, or, to call it by its 
contemporary and more appropriate name, of 
smartness, based neither upon birth nor elegance of 
manners, nor even invariably upon wealth, but 
rather upon a bold and clever arrogance, and sup- 
ported in the general estimation mainly by brazen 
advertisement. An aristocracy of birth may be un- 
intelligent, but it has usually fixed and sustained a 
high standard of deportment and, within certain 
limitations, of conduct. But a society like that of 
London, where the loudest voice was the most 
eagerly listened to, was immediately fatal to every 
canon of propriety and good taste. In effrontery 
of demeanour, in licence of speech, in gaudiness of 
dress, in the very use of paints and cosmetics, the 
English women of fashion drifted farther and 
farther from their fathers' modest ideal of a lady; 
till at length there was not wanting the final scandal 
of women with honest reputations studying and 
imitating, with a too easy fidelity, the costumes and 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON 35 

allurements of the most notorious French cour- 
tesans. 

The love of letters might have been expected to 
oppose a barrier to the all-conquering vulgarity of 
the age. It was diffused over every class of so- 
ciety; the commonest labourers had acquired a 
taste for reading : Tennyson and Hall Caine were 
the theme of dissertations in the mining centres of 
the north and the pulpits of dissenting chapels. 
Never had books been so abundantly published or 
so widely read; the general average of literary 
merit had never been so high ; but this age of 
mediocrity passed away without having produced a 
single writer of original genius, or who excelled in 
the arts of elegant composition. With the vast in- 
crease of readers promoted by the spread of ele- 
mentary education, the social standing, as the 
monetary rewards, of authorship increased in equal 
proportion; but this cause, while it lowered the 
standard of taste, at once inflamed the cupidity and 
diverted the ambitions of men of letters ; and what 
once had been a single-minded devotion degener- 
ated into a trade, pursued rather for its accidental 
em.oluments than for its intrinsic charm. The 
rates of pay of novelists were quoted by the agents 
hke the prices of stock on the Exchange, or the 
chances of a horse-race ; and he who, by economis- 
ing his genius, might have been a master, squan- 
dered his stores in profuse over-production. With 
the plethora of books came a surfeit of commen- 
taries on work which juster canons would have 



36 THINGS SEEN 

left to the revision of posterity. A cloud of critics, 
of anthologists, and of log-rollers darkened the face 
of letters, and upon the decline of genius soon fol- 
lowed the corruption of taste. The last outrage 
upon the language of Shakespeare and Fielding 
was a swarm of periodical leaflets concocted of 
illiterate novelettes, unmeaning statistics, American 
jests, and infantile puzzles : they were consumed in 
prodigious quantities by the lower orders, and, by 
ruining the business of those who purveyed sincere 
if not masterly compositions, contributed more than 
any other cause to the debasement and final extinc- 
tion of English letters. 

With the proud spirit of Empire sunk into the 
narrow greed of the shareholder; with physical 
force at its ebb, sports corrupted, and martial spirit 
tamed ; with domestic business so organised that it 
stifled individuality and fostered dishonest miserli- 
ness among traders, and invited the depravity of 
customers; with elegant manners and polite letters 
a tasteless echo of the half-forgotten past, — ^the 
British Empire entered upon the twentieth century 
under the gloomiest auspices. To the acuter eyes 
of succeeding generations that gloom is heightened 
by the reflection that the mutterings of the coming 
earthquake were all unheard by contemporaries; 
that they prided themselves on the greatness of 
their dominion, and hugged the specious perfection 
of their civilisation. Yet decline was already ac- 
complished and irremediable, and fall was but too 
surely impending. The fair city still stood, but 



FROM THE NEW GIBBON 37 

men were wanting within it. Vulgarity, mediocrity, 
and cheapness had warped and stunted the most 
generous natures. The minds of all were reduced 
to the same level, the high spirit of Empire evapor- 
ated, and little interests, with sordid emotions, in- 
spired every soul. Civilisation had completed its 
work in the suppression of the individual, and the 
British, the most virile of barbarians, the most for- 
ward and energetic of mankind, were designated by 
their very virtues as the first to experience the dire 
results of its consummation. The diminutive 
stature of mankind was daily sinking below the old 
standard ; Britain was indeed peopled by a race of 
pigmies, and the puny breed awaited only the onset 
of the first crisis to become the woeful patient of de- 
feat and ruin. . . . 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY.^ 

"Are there many Bashi-Bazouks here?" tremu- 
lously asked an English nurse at Volo when the 
Turks occupied the town. "Only myself and a 
half-a-dozen others," replied the correspondent. 
An upstanding, clear-eyed, clear-skinned young 
Englishman — in a fez, to be sure, but also in a Nor- 
folk jacket and cord breeches — was not the lady's 
conception of a Bashi-Bazouk at all. She had 
never seen a Bashi-Bazouk ; probably none of the 
Europeans who had been making history in panic- 
stricken Volo had ever seen a Bashi-Bazouk. But 
they were all quite sure that the Turkish army was 
full of them, that they were terrible fellows when 
roused, and that they generally were roused. It 
was something of a revelation when they learned 
that the only Bashi-Bazouks with the army were 
English and American, French and German cor- 
respondents — most of them innocent creatures 
enough. For Bashi-Bazouk means a civilian who 
carries arms, and the only people answering to that 
description were the correspondents. The mind of 
the Turkish private does not comprehend the 
nature and functions of a journalist. Therefore, 
"Have you seen the English Bashi-Bazouks with 
long whips?" "Yes, they have gone to eat with 

^Blackwood's Magazine, July, 1897. 
38 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 39 

the German Bashi-Bazouk with the black horse." 
So spoke the more highly educated: the simpler 
souls from remote Asia lumped us all together as 
"Bashi-Bazouk Allemanni," under the impression 
that all men out of uniform who wore boots must 
be Germans. 

We were strange beasts to them. They used to 
stare at us, if they came on us suddenly, with the 
fixed, expanding eyes of a horse that is about to 
shy. Yet, after all, the Turk's ignorance of Europe 
is a small thing by the side of Europe's ignorance 
of the Turk. The Turk's mind is at least a blank ; 
the European's is usually crammed with the gro- 
tesquest errors. The late war, which otherwise has 
done no good to anybody, has focussed a good 
many of these queer delusions, and given an oppor- 
tunity to certain Europeans of bringing the eye of 
experience to bear on them. Perhaps the experi- 
ence is neither very wide nor very deep. But con- 
sidering the prodigies of credulity and irrelevance 
which stand to the credit of some correspondents 
who saw bits of the Turkish army through field- 
glasses, and many leader-writers who saw nothing 
at all, there is value even in a pair of not over-sharp 
eyes and rather less than the ordinary endowment 
of common-sense. I doubt if any of us who were 
with the Turkish army knows enough to write a 
trustworthy history of the war; I doubt if there 
ever was a war about which it was so heart-break- 
jngly impossible to be sure of a name or a number 
or a date. But there never was a war of which it 



40 THINGS SEEN 

was SO' easy either to be quite sure that the popular 
impressions were ludicrously wrong, or to be so 
confident in trying to correct them. 

Because the Turks wore sloppy canvas slippers 
tied on with string, instead of the ammunition boot, 
it was predicted with the calmness of inevitable cer- 
tainty that they were a disorderly rabble who could 
never stand a day before the civilised, disciplined, 
well-equipped forces of Greece. Because the 
Turks afterwards drove these disciplined forces like 
sheep before them, it was immediately inferred that 
the Turkish army was a magnificently organised 
machine, like the German, of which civilised Eu- 
rope must take account henceforward. From that 
it was an easy step to the conviction that it was 
mainly officered by Germans. In spite of this civil- 
ising influence, it appeared that the Turks com- 
mitted horrible atrocities wherever they went. And 
because it was indisputable that the Turks had 
burned the rafters of a few mud huts, and looted 
a chicken or so for the pot, they were once more 
a gang of disorganised ruffians, who were carrying 
on war with a devilish cruelty that war had never 
seen before. In April we were to admire the Greeks 
for the victories they were just going to win ; in 
May we were to weep for the awful sufferings they 
had undergone. Why we were not, contrariwise, 
to pity the impending sufferings of the Turks in 
April and acclaim their triumphs in May, nobody 
ever seems to have explained. 

The easiest to contradict of these nonsensical 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 4I 

stories is that which refers to the German officers. 
Being the easiest dispelled, it is also the most in- 
structive. Grumbkow Pasha — a Colonel, I think, 
in the Kaiser's artillery — arrived at headquarters on 
the third day of the war. He was called Inspector- 
General of artillery; he held no executive com- 
mand ; he was never in a position to give an order. 
For four days he sat on the top of the Meluna Pass 
and gave advice, which, as a rule, was not followed. 
After that he went down into the Plain and accom- 
panied the force which occupied Larissa — some 
four-and-twenty hours after the last Greek soldier 
had left it. He stayed in Larissa some two or three 
days, during which time the Turkish army con- 
sistently did nothing, and then he went back to 
Constantinople. "It is better so," explained a Turk- 
ish officer, with the charming simplicity of his race ; 
"otherwise it might be said in Europe that our suc- 
cesses were due to him." I smiled. For if there 
was one man who had a right to be angry at any 
connection of his name with Edhem Pasha's oper- 
ations, it was Grumbkow. To make him responsi- 
ble for the dilatory incapacity which first failed to 
rout the Greeks at Mati, and then to crush them 
utterly when they kindly routed themselves — it 
would be blasting Grumbkow's reputation as a sol- 
dier for ever and ever. So the Inspector-General 
of artillery went away to receive an order set in 
brilliants. And excepting him there was no single 
German officer, other than the military attache and 
two correspondents, with the Turkish army at any 



42 THINGS SEEN 

single moment of the campaign, from the first 
action to the last. 

Believing what Greeks said is probably the main 
cause of half the misapprehensions about the war. 
It is difficult at first to disbelieve what you are told 
by a whole army, especially when the army believes 
it itself. But until you train yourself to do this — 
until you train your mind into such a habit of 
scepticism that it instinctively disbelieves every- 
thing it hears — you are quite unfitted to form a 
judgment upon anything that happens in the 
Levant. 

Lying is not confined to the Greeks. It is worst 
with the Greeks and the Armenians, because they 
are cleverest; but it flourishes exceedingly among 
Turks and Jews, and all Levantines. There are two 
kinds of it. One is the ordinary lie, with intent to 
deceive, such as we know it in the West. Of such 
lies as this the regal seats are Athens and Constan- 
tinople. Athens during the present war was by 
much the worse, perhaps only because there was 
most need of lying on the Greek side. Also the liars 
in the War OfSce at Athens and at the Crown 
Prince's headquarters found for a short intoxicating 
season that the world was disposed to believe them. 
Consequently the first few days of the war were a 
carnival of fiction. During the week between the 
battle of Meluna and the bolt from Larissa, the cen- 
sorship — for very good and sufficient reasons — was 
rather rigid on the Turkish side : on the Greek 
side, it appears, it suppressed news steadily during 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 43 

the whole campaign. Consequently the War Office 
at Athens had a quite clear field, and naturally it 
covered it with Turkish corpses. Five thousand 
yesterday, seven thousand to-dayi — when all the 
time nothing was happening but reconnaissances 
and desultory artillery duels, and shooting from 
behind stone-walls across precipitous ravines. Since 
the war ended the Greeks, curiously enough, have 
begun the same game again. Seventeen thousand 
Turks, somebody has telegraphed to a Roman 
newspaper — you cannot help feeling that this was 
surely a case for the more economical postal ser- 
vice — fell at the battle of Domokos; whereas in 
fact there can hardly have been much more than 
that number under fire at all. 

This sort of lie is self-contradicted by events. 
The War Office at Athens got itself found out very 
early, and nobody gave it a moment's credence 
again. But there is a much subtler kind of lie, 
equally unworthy of belief, but far more difficult to 
disbelieve. This is the lie that is believed by the 
teller of it. Next only to the concoction of lies the 
Levantine excels in the swallowing of them. He 
would not believe a story about money which af- 
fected his own pocket unless he first had some rea- 
son to convince him that it was true. But short of 
that he knows no distinction between truth and 
falsehood in themselves, such as obtains in the 
colder North and West. With him imagination 
takes the place of reason. He will believe and 
spread the wildest fiction, if only it be effective and 



44 THINGS SEEN 

well devised. If it is what he wishes to believe, or 
what he believes you wish to believe, that is quite 
enough to make him believe it. And believe it for 
the moment he does quite sincerely. 

The Turkish army, for example, contained dozens 
of officers whom you could not set down as any- 
thing- but charming, civilised gentlemen — yet not 
one so Europeanized that you could believe a word 
he said. Edhem Pasha himself told me wi'ih his 
own lips a delightful fable about the flight of the 
Greeks from Mati — how that the Albanians could 
not be restrained from singing war-songs as they 
marched ; how that a Greek pope heard them from 
his belfry tower, and dashed off to tell the Crown 
Prince that he was outflanked. He pointed to the 
very belfry, alive to testify tO' the fact. I am con- 
vinced that he believed the tale absolutely, and I 
am convinced that it was absolutely false. But it 
was a pretty tale, and the oriental imagination was 
quite defenceless against it. If this was the attitude 
of the Comimander-in-Chief, you can imagine the 
state of mind of the soldiers. They firmly believed 
that they were fighting the whole force of Greece, 
Italy, England, and France, and winning glorious 
victories over their combined armies every day. 
The fall of each Greek stronghold was announced 
to correspondents, not officially, but gravely and by 
high officers, days before the Turks came near it. 
Every morning my dragoman came to me with 
stories of Greek disaster — a thousand Greeks, ten 
thousand Greeks, a million Greeks, always myste- 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 45 

riously killed between sundown and sunrise. "How 
do you know?" "The soldiers say so." "How do 
they know?" "Of course they know, the soldiers." 
"Did you hear any firing?" "No." "Then how 
could all the Greeks be killed?" "I don't know." 
"Do you believe it, then ?" Well, no ; when he 
came to think over the probabilities of it, he did 
not beheve it. But without a Western Socrates to 
supplant his imagination by reason, he would never 
have dreamed of not believing it to the end of his 
days. 

In a war between nations of this cast of thought, 
you can believe nothing but what you see. What 
you are told may be true, but it is just as likely to 
be false. If there is any reason for lying it is almost 
certain to be false; in any case neither Turk nor 
Greek understands the Western craving for accu- 
racy, and neither will take any pains to satisfy it. 
Most of the war was seen by Europeans, and of this 
some day a trustworthy history may be written ; 
about what was not so seen the truth will never be 
known. Anybody who hungers for statistics may 
hunger till he starves for them : he will never know 
the numbers of the killed and wounded. The Turks 
could afford to tell the truth if they knew it. But 
they do not. I did indeed meet one general who 
had entered in his pocket-book the losses of his 
division from day to day. This was Hairi Pasha, 
who was stated by the Greeks to have lost 7,000 
men in one fight at Domassi. His whole force can 
hardly have been double that, and the pocket-book 



46 THINGS SEEN 

showed ten killed and thirty-six wounded for the 
whole week. Assuming that his Excellency read 
out the figures correctly, I am inclined to believe 
in this note-book, as I can see no point in carrying 
about a note-book to deceive yourself with. More- 
over, it appears to be a hobby of Hairi Pasha's not 
to lose men in action, as he ruined Edhem's com- 
binations at both Pharsala and Domokos, rather 
than send his division under fire. But to expect 
the Turkish army to know how many men it lost 
is to ask grapes of thistles. You can make rough 
guesses : for instance, after Domokos some 900 
men came into hospital; so that, with killed and 
with the wounded who never got into hospital, the 
loss was perhaps between 1200 and 1500. On the 
same sort of calculation, the Turkish losses in Thes- 
saly for the whole war were perhaps 7000 or 8000. 
But no Turk would ever be likely to put it at any- 
thing so unsensational. Most would probably an- 
swer with vagueness but perfect truth, "It is not 
known." Others, according as a small or large 
figure appealed to their momentary sense of the 
fitness of things, might say a hundred or a hundred 
thousand. Really nobody knows. I suppose there 
is a sort of roll-call somewhere, but I never saw 
any sign of the use of it during the campaign. Even 
if there were, it would be impossible within a mat- 
ter of weeks to know whether a man was dead, 
wounded, or only missing. Nobody outside the 
General Stafif knew the country ; nobody knew the 
disposition of the forces. Men lost their battalions 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 47 

by the score, and strolled over the Thessalian Plain 
by the day looking for them. "Have you seen my 
battalion?" — ^the question has been put to me a 
dozen times in an hour's ride. Of course my drago- 
man, or anybody else that might understand Turk- 
ish, directed the straggler to the last battalion he 
had met. Ten to one it was the wrong one, in 
which case the wanderer started off on his travels 
again — ten to one in the wrong direction. There- 
fore it was impossible to tell the strength of a 
corps from day to day, impossible to estimate the 
losses, impossible to estimate the strength of the 
army. 

In counting Greek losses the question is fur- 
ther complicated by the intolerable national self- 
conceit, which seeks, now that danger is over, to 
minimise losses, and also by the frequency of deser- 
tions. A man disappeared. He may have been 
killed and he m.ay have been captured ; but it was 
at least as likely that he had stripped off his uni- 
form and crept back to his home in the back streets 
of Larissa or a village off the main roads in the 
plain. His Jewish or Mohammedan neighbours 
helped him to disappear for the time: he was sent 
neither to Salonica as a prisoner nor to Pharsala 
as a deserter. So that the Greek losses are even 
less possible to arrive at than the Turkish. A Turk- 
ish gunner would come in and announce with mod- 
est certitude that his shrapnel had that day ac- 
counted for 2O0O of the enemy. About the same 
moment a Greek staff officer was commenting to 



4o THINGS SEEN 

the correspondents on the curious phenomenon 
that so many hundred rounds of Turkish shrapnel 
had not grazed a single Greek finger. You can 
only be certain that the truth Hes somewhere be- 
tween the two — which yet leaves room for uncer- 
tainty enough 

It will be inferred from all this that those author- 
ities who represented the Turkish army, on the 
strength of its easy victories, as a formidable en- 
gine of war and a menace to Christian Europe were 
as far out as they were when they predicted its 
early collapse on the strength of its beggarly ap- 
pearance. At Elassona it was a rabble, because the 
men lacked boots — which they would still have 
lacked had boots grown on every tree. At Larissa 
it was an organisation that might have shamed 
Moltke, because in the meantime the Greeks had 
run away from it. In truth the Turkish army was 
neither the one nor the other. It was just good 
enough to do just what it did. It could drive the 
Greeks before it, but could not destroy them. It 
drove the Greeks because it was an army of good 
men ; it failed to destroy them because it was an 
army of bad officers. It would be hard to exag- 
gerate either the goodness or the badness. The 
Turkish soldier is the raw material of the finest 
fighting in the world ; his officer is the finished 
product of one of the worst governments in the 
world. Nobody becomes a villain in a moment, but 
it must be owned that the career of the Turkish 
officer leaves him very little alternative in the long- 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 49 

run. He is not, of course, the monster of barbarian 
cruelty which British fancy often loves to paint him. 
In his demeanour he is a much nearer approach to 
the British idea of a gentleman than the Briton 
often encounters outside his own country. Cour- 
teous, dignified, often vain, but yet self-contained 
enough not to be a swaggerer, he has the root of 
gentlemanliness in him — a secure self-confidence 
and self-respect. You will not find in the Turk the 
jerky self-assertiveness which to our eyes mars the 
behaviour of officers even in the great European 
armies. He can maintain his dignity without any 
duello or court of honour. He is quite sure of him- 
self. 

You may divide the Turkish officers into two 
clearly marked typesi — each, I am afraid, with as 
clearly marked faults. There is the Constantino- 
politan — the staff officer, the aide-de-camp, the offi- 
cer of the crack regiments quartered about the 
Yildiz ; there is also the regimental officer from 
the provinces. The first is usually a man of some 
means, occasionally of great wealth. He gets pro- 
motion early. He reflects something of the cosmo- 
politanism of Constantinople; he is a man of refine- 
ment, talks French or German or both, is quite 
emancipated from fanatical Mohammedanism, 
drinks sweet champagne and neglects prayer-time, 
is a bit of a courtier. And it is just this bit of a 
courtier that is his ruin. He is insincere, an in- 
triguer, not too scrupulous about money. In the 
study of their profession officers of this class, es- 



50 THINGS SEEN 

pecially the younger, are theoretically very well 
equipped. I saw a good deal of a little lieutenant 
who spoke of "les lois de la tactique" with the same 
hushed awe as of "sa Majeste Imperiale." One of 
the laws, I remember, was that you must never on 
any account attack the enemy unless with at least 
double his force. But I am afraid this well-edu- 
cated and most amiable officer had not the least 
beginning of the makings of a real soldier. He had 
never been out of Constantinople in his life before ; 
he was a wobbly and tactless horseman ; he puffed 
heavily up-hill; he had not the very vaguest idea 
of finding his way across a country. He could 
ride along a road twice daily for a week, and not 
recognise it when he struck it in the middle. To 
do him justice, he could live on next to nothing, 
though he was a glutton for sleep. He never did 
anything on his own responsibility. Although he 
had no duties to speak of, being merely a loosely 
attached aide-de-camp to nobody in particular, he 
preferred to sit about with his friends in Larissa 
rather than go out to see the battle of Pharsala. 
After the Turkish repulse at Velestino, when every- 
body expected another engagem.ent for the morrow, 
he went off with a relative to a little picnic ten 
miles in rear. One day I was riding out with him 
to Meluna, the Commander-in-Chief being ahead, 
when there came down the pass a pony with bag- 
gage which he thought he recognised. "The Mar- 
shal is in retreat; the Greeks are advancing," he 
said; and without another word vv^hipped round 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 51 

and was well on his way down the pass before I 
could persuade him even to ask whether his fears 
were justified. He was a good-hearted boy, and 
so far as I know perfectly honest and independent. 
But he was quite helpless outside a town, had no 
initiative, no power of command. I should not like 
to say he was a coward, but he was certainly con- 
spicuously lacking in dare-devilry and adventure. 
And he was a very favourable specimen of his class. 
The provincial ofificer is entirely different. He 
is often penniless, and he is often a subaltern at 
fifty. But he is generally a brave man ; he is inured 
to a rough life ; he knows his men, and they know 
him. So far he is better equipped for command. 
Yet, rough as he is, he is generally self-indulgent ; 
he is sluggish and utterly uneducated. He is left 
a good deal to his own initiative in war-time; he 
has no field-glass; he does not know in the least 
what is going on ; it is always odds that he will 
lead his men into the wrong place, and then not 
know how to get them out again. He is a straighter 
man than the town-bred officer, and if he says he 
is your friend he probably means that he would put 
himself to some little inconvenience to serve you ; 
most of the other kind would not willingly give 
you a biscuit though you were starving. Neither 
kind of officer is exceedingly disciplined — ^the pro- 
vincial hardly at all, but then he does not exact 
much discipline from those under him. His men 
do not salute him, and he does not care. He sees 
that his orders are obeyed when he gives them; 



52 THINGS SEEN 

but he usually finds it less trouble to give no orders 
at all, and let the company or the battalion com- 
mand itself. 

Of course we know for a fact that there have been 
German officers "reorganising" the Turkish army ; 
but we also know — at least the less ignorant of us 
— that they have been almost heartbroken from 
first to last, because nobody ever took the least 
notice of their recommendations. They have left 
the Turkish army very much as they found it. The 
infantry, for example, has not the rudiments of fire 
discipline. You would have said the first step to- 
wards Germanizing them would have been to teach 
them to fire volleys ; but I doubt if they fired a 
single volley, otherwise than accidentally, during 
the whole war. I doubt if they ever formed a firing- 
line. Their favourite formation seemed to be a 
kind of mixture of a skirmishing line and columns 
of companies. Each company as it went under fire 
spread out behind the last ; and the men either 
fired so high that their bullets went clear over the 
enemy or so low that they lodged in their comrades' 
backs. They would probably have been effective 
with the bayonet, though I doubt if they were ever 
taught its use. Only, though there were bayonet 
charges at Meluna, the Greeks never waited to see 
what they could do with cold steel. 

Indeed, thinking it over, I wonder to myself how 
there came to be any Greeks killed at all. The 
artillery was good, no doubt, at the beginning of 
the war; but artillery practice may be very good 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 53 

and yet hit nobody. According to accounts from 
the Greek side, this was very much what happened. 
The cavalry- — that hobgoblin cavalry, sticking to 
the backs of the scuttling Greeks — seems to have 
done singularly little for the noise it made. The 
swarms of fierce troopers that everybody was talk- 
ing about let the Greeks escape from Larissa, from 
Pharsala, and from Domokos. But why? For the 
very simple reason that there were no swarms of 
fierce troopers. On their own showing the Turks 
never had more than four regiments of looo sabres 
apiece, and even this was an enormous exaggera- 
tion. The average strength of a squadron was 
thirty to forty horses, and I never saw more than 
ten squadrons together. With deductions for 
patrols, escorts, and orderlies, I greatly doubt if 
the Turks ever had more than 500 effective cavalry. 
Such as it was, the cavalry went to Velestino. And 
there an aide-de-camp of the Sultan and son of 
Ghazi .Mukhtar Pasha found it somewhere about 
the field, and suggested a charge. He was not in 
command of the cavalry, nor of anything else, but 
as he had studied in Germany and ought to have 
known better, the cavalry obeyed him and charged. 
It charged in column up-hill, against earthworks 
in front and flank. It was as desperate a piece of 
heroism as Balaklava — and even more wickedly 
useless. The loss in men was not very heavy — 
there were not very many men to losei — but scores 
of horses were put out of action, and after Velestino 
the cavalry was even less terrible than before. As 



54 THINGS SEEN 

the Greeks, however, while asserting that they had 
annihilated it, continued to be as much afraid of it 
as ever, the loss had little effect on the war. 

With the Turkish infantry almost untrained and 
the artillery not much better, the cavalry almost 
non-existent and the engineers quite so, it seems a 
wonder indeed that they walked across Thessaly 
in triumph. But the Turkish soldier is such a mar- 
vel of strength and endurance that he could do 
sapper's work as well as his own and be none the 
worse for it. He also did the ordnance and trans- 
port and ambulance work — and did it wonderfully 
well, considering that it was none of his business. 
As far as I could find out, there was no member 
of the General Staff responsible for the transport. 
When ammunition or biscuit or fodder was wanted, 
a battalion of infantry was sent off with a train of 
pack-ponies and brought it in. Who found out that 
it was wanted, who decided who should fetch it, 
whence and whither, I could find no single ofificer 
who knew; yet it always came. Elassona was dis- 
tant seventy to eighty miles from its base on the 
Salonica-Monastir railway ; at first everything had 
to be brought up on pack-saddles; yet it always 
came. Later, both in Macedonia and Thessaly, it 
was possible to replace ponies and infantry bat- 
talions by carts and Christians. But at first the 
transport, though wonderfully efficient in its won- 
derful way, was a serious drain on the fighting force 
of the army. 

Why, then, were the Turks victorious? Were 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 55 

their defects of training and organisation redeemed 
by any brilliant strategical skill? That least of 
all. "I think Mushir Pasha nice chap," said my 
dragoman to me in an expansive moment, and so 
indeed he was — dignified, kindly, humorous, a com- 
plete and perfect gentleman. But that does not 
make a great general. It is, indeed, difficult to 
judge of Edhem Pasha's performance without the 
risk of injustice. We were told — by belated English 
newspapers — that the Sultan had given him a free 
hand. Yet it is certain that he never went forward 
faster than the field-telegraph, of which the other 
end was in the Yildiz. It may be that in Turkey, 
where personal government is really personal and 
you will do well not to forget it, a free hand is not 
quite so free as it is elsewhere. As a general Edhem 
gave the impression of being sound and safe, but 
very, very slow. Perhaps it would be kindest to 
hold that his soundness was all his own, and that 
when he was slow the telegraph-line from the Yildiz 
was tugging at his coat-tails. But, after all, Edhem 
is a Turk, and the Turk has never been distin- 
guished for celerity in the hour of victory. His 
pace in pursuit has usually been much the same as 
his pace in retreat, which is not hurried. Whether 
it be laid to Edhem's charge or the Sultan's it is 
certain that a prodigious deal of time was wasted 
in the campaign, and that it was this waste of time 
which saved the Greek army again and again. After 
Meluna a whole day was lost before sending down 
the cavalry to reconnoitre, although they had taken 



56 THINGS SEEN 

no part in the battle and were perfectly fresh. After 
that, at the so-called battle of Mati, the attack was 
delayed until Hamdi Pasha's division could come 
up from Karya and outflank the Greek right. 
Hamdi delayed, and Edhem waited: a partial at- 
tack was delivered on April 23rd upon the Greek 
right in the afternoon, and they bolted unpursued 
in the night. Had the attack been made in the 
morning, the Crown Prince's army would have 
been smashed to pieces by dark. Even the next 
day there was no pursuit : Larissa was not occupied 
till the 25th, and even after that there was no pur- 
suit. Torpor ensued. On May ist Naim Pasha 
fought the unsuccessful action of Velestino. He 
fought against orders, and with a force far too weak 
for his purpose ; but for all that the stronger force 
should have been there — of course it arrtved next 
morning* — and with it orders to keep the Greeks 
on the run. By this time the panic of the Greeks 
had been checked, and they had talked themselves 
into self-confidence again. Yet it was not till May 
5th that Edhem marched out and beat the Greeks 
at Pharsala. Here once more defeat should have 
been rout: that it was not so was due to the in- 
competence of Hairi Pasha, who should have cut 
the road to Domokos, and to the incompetence of 
Edhem Pasha, who did not get his orders obeyed. 
The Greeks were not even pursued. Upon Pharsala 
followed inevitably the occupation of Velestino and 
Volo. But after that — from the 8th to the 17th of 
May — Edhem did nothing. Bairam was the ex- 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 57 

cuse; but masters of war take no account of re- 
ligious festivals, and even Bairam was but four days 
out of nine. The Greeks were allowed to rest and 
entrench themselves comfortably, and measure off 
their ranges at Domokos as they had done at 
Pharsala. At Domokos the Turks paid with the 
heaviest day's loss of the war for this and for re- 
newed incompetence on the part of their generals. 
Once more Edhem tried flanking and cutting the 
retreat; once more his generals were late, and 
lazy, and insubordinate ; and once more he sat still 
and allowed himself to be disobeyed. There was 
only one energetic pursuing movement in the whole 
war, and that was on the last day of it, when Sey- 
foullah Pasha attacked the Greek rear-guard in the 
descent of the Furka Pass. But for the armistice 
the Turkish cavalry would that day at last have got 
at the Greeks retreating on the level, with four 
hours of good daylight before them. And that 
action was fought without the knowledge and 
against the wishes of Edhem Pasha. 

Why, then, once more, were the Turks victori- 
ous? If it was not training, nor organisation, nor 
generalship, what was it? Simply this: that the 
Turk is a brave man, while the Greek is otherwise. 
The Turkish soldier may be badly trained and 
badly organised and badly led ; he remains a splen- 
did soldier. He loves war, and he has a natural 
turn for it. He can bear without a murmur priva- 
tions which would kill most Europeans — without 
even a suspicion that they are hardships at all. He 



58 THINGS SEEN 

has no more of the Continental smartness than his 
officers have of the Continental code of honour; 
but he can keep at his shambling three miles an 
hour, in heavy marching order, for ever. He can 
march all day and fight all night, and be ready for 
a turn at road-making in the morning. He can 
receive a bullet through the belly or ripping up his 
arm from wrist to elbow ; he can lie so in the sun 
all day, ride twenty miles on a pack-saddle into 
hospital, and when he gets there the difficulty is 
not so much to cure him as to persuade him that 
it is worth while getting his clothes off. Life in 
rural Turkey is poor enough and insecure enough 
to prevent him from overvaluing it; therefore he 
will unflinchingly face fire which more civilised 
men would shrink from. And though the Turk — 
as opposed, for instance, to the Kurd and the Arab 
— is not fanatical, he still retains sufficient inborn 
faith in the Prophet and the Koran to believe that 
if he is shot by the infidel he will sleep that night 
in the arms of Houris in Paradise. 

The very faults of the Turk work together to 
the advantage of his soldierliness. If he is the lord 
of subject populations — which is curiously con- 
strued into a crime in him by the owners of India 
and South Africa — he draws therefrom the con- 
sciousness of superiority which makes it impossible 
for him to run from a Greek. He may retreat, as 
at Velestino ; but he does it very unwillingly, very 
slowly and defiantly, only praying that the despised 
enemy may venture down into the plain and follow. 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 59 

If the Turk is uncivilised, he reaps the compensa- 
tion of it in his untiring body and his unshaking 
nerves. If he is dull and unintelligent, he is just 
for that reason the best disciplined soldier in the 
world. 

The best disciplined soldier in the world! It 
seems a startling eulogy to select for the Turk of 
all men — ^the unspeakable Turk! But it is abso- 
lutely true. He is not excitable nor argumentative ; 
he is accustomed to the feeling of superiority, and 
therefore less liable than other men to become in- 
toxicated with victory or insubordinate in defeat. 
Consequently he will always obey his officers when 
they tell him not to burn or plunder. If they do 
not tell him, he is but a man and a soldier in the 
enemy's country; he will take anything he may 
have need of, or indeed anything he thinks he can 
sell. Wanton damage, beyond this, the real Turk 
takes little pleasure in ; his grave and self-contained 
nature does not break out in promiscuous smashing 
and bonfiring like that of the Albanian and of cer- 
tain Europeans. In the late war it was to the inter- 
est of the Turks to behave with humanity, and they 
did it. It would be unjust to put their moderation 
and discipline on this ground alone. Most of the 
ofificers, so far as I could judge, are as humane, 
though not as sensitive, as most Europeans; and 
the common soldier, though he despises the Greek, 
cherishes no active hostility against the race, as he 
has lately come to do against the Armenian. But 
leaving humanity aside, it was the plain and vital 



6o THINGS SEEN 

interest of the Turk to be on his best behaviour 
during the Thessalian campaign. He had corres- 
pondents with him who would tell the world if he 
behaved well, and he knew that he had enemies 
who would say he behaved badly whatever he did. 
There was an impression — mistaken as it turns out, 
at least so far as regards Britain — that he would 
reap the benefit of good conduct when Europe 
came to have its say in the terms of peace. There 
was every inducement to avoid pillage and cruelty ; 
but without the discipline of the common Turk 
these inducements would have appealed to the 
higher officers in vain. 

But were pillage and cruelty avoided? We have 
been told that they were not. The press has been 
drenched with the usual stories of Turkish outrage. 
We have been told that the correspondents with 
the Turks were allowed to send no word but what 
was favourable to the Turks. Wait till they come 
home unmuzzled, said the friends of Greece, and 
then you will hear ! For all this outcry, I have not 
yet heard that any European correspondent who 
went through the campaign with Edhem Pasha's 
army has felt it necessary to improve the occasion 
of his unmuzzling by any such stories of Turkish 
atrocity as seem to have been promised to an await- 
ing world. The iniquity of the censorship has not 
yet been laid bare. It is quite true that on the 
one occasion when I thought it necessary to allude 
to the want of discipline of certain Albanian irregu- 
lars, the despatch was returned, with that passage 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 6l 

neatly scored out in blue pencil. But after all, a 
censorship is only human, and that, among other 
things, is what it is for. No other military censor- 
ship in the world would have let the thing pass, and 
only with the Turkish censorship — the unorganised, 
happy-go-lucky, apologetic Turkish censorship- 
would it have been worth while to try it. Probably 
the censor — or, more accurately, the officer who to 
his distraction was pitched upon as censor for the 
day — would have crossed out any charges of whole- 
sale incendiarism whenever they were made. But 
they were not made, because they were not called 
for. 

The Turkish atrocities may be inquired into 
under three heads — burning, pillage, and worse. 
Burning there undoubtedly was ; and though the 
sum-total of damage done amounted to wonderfully 
little, it was more irritating* in proportion than any 
other kind of disorder, because there was no possi- 
ble profit in it. But to allege, as I understand was 
done, that the Turks were wantonly burning every 
village they set foot in, is the grossest of slanders. 
Going carefully over the map, this is the list of the 
damage I saw. At Karadere (the Greek Ligaria), 
at the foot of the Meluna Pass, one or two houses 
were burned out on the day after the village was 
occupied. I thought at the time it was done for a 
military signal; but I doubt whether this was so. 
The village of Kazaklar, half-way between Meluna 
and Larissa, was pretty well burned out. When this 
.was done I do not know, as I only saw it in re- 



62 THINGS SEEN 

turning. I do not think it was on fire at any time 
before the taking of Larissa. Neither in Tyrnavos 
on the day after its capture, nor in Larissa on the 
day of its capture, was a single house on fire. I 
saw only one fire in Larissa during the whole war. 
This was said to be an accident, and I am inclined 
to believe it. On the other hand, the village of 
Deliler was almost wholly destroyed on the night 
of the fight ther^ — whether set afire by shells, by 
the entering Turks or the retreating Greeks, I do 
not know : nobody knows on such occasions. After 
the taking of Larissa, following the course of the 
fighting, the village in front of Velestino — Rizomy- 
los it appears to be called; — was very badly knocked 
about : as the place was occupied by the Greeks, 
taken by the Turks, reoccupied by Greek outposts, 
and then once more occupied by the Turks, the 
damage was not unnatural. In Velestino itself 
about one house in four or five was damaged. 
About Pharsala there were fires after the battle in 
five villages, — Tatari, Barakli, Sechi, Pasia Magula, 
and Vasili, — ^but none of them suffered at all severe- 
ly except the last two. In Pharsala itself there have 
been fires in, I should say, about one house in ten : 
when this was done I cannot say, as I cannot re- 
member seeing any burning during the ten days I 
was within sight of the place. Southwards towards 
Domokos I saw a small fire in Hadji Amar as the 
troops passed through it to the attack of the Greek 
position. During the same fight huts were burned 
in Krol-Oba and Purnari. The Turks said that this 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 63 

had been done by the Greeks as they evacuated, and 
certainly they were both ablaze an hour or more 
before the first Turks entered them. In Domokos 
itself, which probably suffered more severely than 
any other place of any size, the example of incen- 
diarism was unquestionably set by the Greeks. 
Flames were rising from the height before dawn, 
at three or four in the morning. The evacuation, it 
seems, only began at midnight and I have heard 
since that an English correspondent, who stayed 
some hours behind the army, saw with his own eyes 
Greek irregulars setting fire to houses. It must be 
admitted that when the Albanian irregulars arrived 
they followed the example with zeal. I believe the 
Greeks had begun the conflagration with an old 
mosque — at any rate there was a charred minaret 
beside it, and the Turks believed there had been 
sacrilege. About a third of Domokos was burned 
out. 

The list looks a fairly long one, but the actual 
damage done was wonderfully small. The ordinary 
ThessaHan village is mainly composed of mud huts, 
and mud does not burn ; possibly the fire even does 
the sun-dried bricks good. When a village of this 
kind is burned, it simply means the loss of its lath 
rafters and the breaking of its tiles — not a ruinous 
loss even to a peasant. More pretentious buildings, 
as at Velestino and Domokos, usually only lost their 
floors and roofs : the light dry wood burned so 
quickly that in most cases the fire was out before 
the walls fell in. Of course the smallness of the 



64 THINGS SEEN 

loss makes no difference in the guilt — if we are to 
speak in ridiculous exaggerations — of the Turkish 
army. It is more pertinent to this point that, except 
apparently Kazaklar, no single village that I know 
of suffered by fire except during or immediately 
after a fight. Turkish troops passed through and 
halted at dozens of villages in Thessaly, and left 
everything standing. Without multiplying outland- 
ish names, there are eight along the road from 
Larissa to Velestino which gave no sign of having 
been touched as late as May 9th. Even what fires 
there were were partly accidental : a soldier cooked 
his coffee near a dry thorn-hedge, and when he 
went aw^ay the blazing hedge spread to the nearest 
roof. Perhaps all this is enough to show that the 
accusations of incendiarism have been grossly, as 
bad as wilfully, overstated. A German corres- 
pondent who had been through the Franco-German 
war told me that the Turks burned beyond com- 
parison less than the Germans. 

As for looting, there was next to none of it, for 
the very sufficient reason that there was next to 
nothing to loot. People talk vaguely of living on 
the enemy's country ; but when there is nothing left 
in the enemy's country except green corn and 
young vines it is not easy, with the best will in the 
world, to see how it is to be done. A good deal 
of the corn was cut for fodder, a very few cattle 
and sheep were found and eaten, and likewise a 
few fowls. I presume the owners were not paid for 
this, as the owners had disappeared. But how such 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 65 

looting as this is to be prevented in war-time those 
who cry out against pillage have not explained. 
You might as well expect cavalry to "ware wheat" 
in a charge. Of loot, other than food, there was 
hardly any on the market at all. I looted a reel of 
cotton myself in Pharsala, but I saw nothing more 
valuable about the place. The only two towns 
where there was any possibility of plunder were 
Larissa and Volo, and both were practically un- 
touched. "Practically untouched," of course, does 
not mean that no soldier took what was not his. 
Every soldier, I do not doubt, was as anxious to 
pick up something worth a few piastres as any 
other soldier of any other nation would have been 
in the like case. I do not say that nothing was 
stolen ; on the contrary, at Larissa the number of 
things that disappeared would probably mount up 
to a good deal. Rifles and bayonets, fuse-boxes, 
saddles, and camp-beds, of course, do not count: 
they were military stores ; and if anybody has a 
right to complain that they sometimes came into 
the hands of European correspondents, it is the 
Sultan. I do not say there were not other things 
looted. But I do say, first, that the looting was 
relatively very little in Larissa, and in Volo, so far 
as I saw on the day of capture, none at all; and, 
second, that every possible efifort was made to 
check what looting there was. For the first point, 
I suppose there were jewellers' shops, curiosity 
shops, and the like, in Larissa ; there must have 
been jewels and other easily concealed, easily port- 



66 THINGS SEEN 

able objects of some value in the possession of in- 
habitants of the town. And I am quite confident 
that if any such had been on the market my most 
efficient dragoman would have known it, and sug- 
gested a deal. But there was absolutely nothing 
of the sort for sale, with the one exception of a 
cheap reliquary, probably dropped by its owner. 
Very Hkely most of the inhabitants of Larissa took 
their valuables away with them ; indeed I saw sev- 
eral families bringing them back again. But I also 
chanced to go into one or two houses which had 
been left almost untouched by the owners, and re- 
mained so. In any case, wherever the wealth of 
Larissa went, it was not into the pockets of the 
Turks. 

When the Turks entered the town they placed 
sentinels at every corner, and at all the houses 
that looked likely to invite plunder. Many of the 
principal shops had already been ripped open and 
gutted by the Greek irregulars and liberated con- 
victs, whose cartridge-cases littered the streets. 
Two or three days afterwards a swarm of Albanian 
irregulars arrived, and commenced operations by 
smashing in and clearing out some shops in the 
main streets. This ought to have been foreseen, 
no doubt, but at least the authorities guarded 
against a repetition of it : while the Arnauts were 
in the town there was a sentinel to every shop. 
It was not possible to place a sentinel at every 
house in the town, and I daresay a good many 
were broken into, if you can use the word of houses 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 67 

left wide open inviting entry. But I think any 
fair judge who saw the Turkish officers will admit 
that they did their best to stop such things. Of- 
fenders were never let go unpunished : several were 
imprisoned, some were flogged, more were inform- 
ally slashed across the face with riding-whips after 
the Turkish manner. Seyfoullah Pasha, who was 
Governor, organised a civil police to help keep 
order, out of the Mussulman, Jewish, and Christian 
inhabitants. I regret to say that one of the first 
consequences was that a Christian was discovered 
by the Governor himself in the attempt to take up 
a fellow-Christian's bed and walk. It was not the 
best testimony to the prudence of the mixed gen- 
darmery system, but I can bear personal witness 
to the energy with which Seyfoullah thrashed the 
mixed gendarme. Night and day this excellent 
officer was always about the streets, and there were 
others hardly less energetic. In a word, the will to 
loot — without violence — was present with the Turk, 
as with all soldiers : it was repressed by the officers, 
not entirely, but probably with as much success as 
has ever been seen with any conquering army in 
the world. 

Beyond such military peccadilloes as a little burn- 
ing and loot, the Turks committed no outrage worth 
mentioning at all. I saw one dead peasant, and 
heard of one other. I cannot say that these were 
all that died : no one man could see everything that 
was done. But when a man goes through a cam- 
paign, wandering about pretty much as he likes. 



68 THINGS SEEN 

he can be sure that if there had been much killing 
of peasants he would have seen more of it. More- 
over, it must be remembered that the Greek Gov- 
ernment had armed large numbers of peasants, who 
followed their army as irregulars : it is possible 
that the dead men had been playing the franc-tireur. 
I saw several disarmed peasants among the prison- 
ers ; and they were not shot, when taken, as they 
would have been in the West, but of course they 
would have been killed if they were encountered 
under arms, I never saw a Turkish soldier strike 
or ill-use a Greek in town or country. As for the 
ravishings and tortures of which we hear so much 
when there are no Europeans to corroborate or 
deny them, I saw absolutely no trace of such. There 
were not many women left in the Greek villages, 
but there were some ; there were also Jewish women 
in Larissa, and droves of Gipsies hung round the 
army on its march. I heard of no incivility offered 
to any of these. Again, this does not prove that 
there was no incivility; but I think it does prove 
that there cannot have been much. 

Taking it all together, I am inclined to doubt 
very much whether any army in an enemy's country 
ever came nearer to irreproachability of discipline 
than the Turks in Thessaly. Judged by the laws 
of war set up by the most civilised nations in time 
of peace, it is probable that a pretty long list of 
misdemeanours might be made out against them. 
But then those laws were never rigidly observed 
by any army that I ever heard of. For the most 



WHAT HAPPENED IN THESSALY 69 

part the breaches of them are tacitly and very prop- 
erly condoned by those who inform the stay-at- 
home public as to the progress of wars. There is 
nothing to be gained by informing the public that 
men who are patterns of virtue and propriety in 
peace, tend towards raw savagery in war ; the public 
accordingly is not informed. As long as war lasts 
men will be different in war from their other selves 
in peace. This may not be to war's credit; but 
there are quite enough excellent people working 
inefifectively for the abolition of war already to 
make it unnecessary to insist on this additional 
argument. Unless it had been Turks who were 
engaged in this late campaign, we should not have 
heard a word of excesses. Because they were 
Turks there seems to have grown up a new theory 
concerning this war — to wit, that a nation which 
engages in war and is beaten has a right to com- 
plain when it suffers any inconvenience that is not 
with it in time of peace. How universal still is the 
reign of cant in this country may be judged from 
some of the arguments of those who hold this new- 
fangled theory. One writer speaks of "looting" 
Greek cartridges and cannon. Others cry out be- 
cause the Greeks are like to lose the harvest of 
Thessaly, as if war were a kind of hunt expected to 
bear in mind the interests of the farmer. We shall 
next hear of war as a football-match, with umpires 
to blow a whistle if anybody steals an egg, and 
award the other side a penalty cannon-shot. One 
authority has already gone so far as to find it 



70 THINGS SEEN 

merest justice that the pecuniary losses of the 
Greeks should be put on the other side against the 
war indemnity. That the conquerors should be 
presented with the bill of the conquered — thereby 
almost inevitably finding a heavy balance against 
themselves — is indeed a new view of the ethics of 
war, and it is small wonder that the Greeks should 
loot their own towns and burn their own villages 
if it is to be the law of Europe. 

To sum up this rambling commentary on what 
happened in Thessaly, it comes to little enough. 
It has not provided the world with any unexpected 
truths either about the art of war or about the 
Eastern question. A badly led army which will 
stand up to be shot at beats a badly led army which 
will not: that we could have predicted. The Turk- 
ish army is not a negligible quantity, which nobody 
not utterly ignorant and crack-brained ever thought 
it was ; yet neither is it that prodigy of modern 
science and organisation which some people rashly 
took it for on the strength of its easy successes. 
The Turk is very much what he was before — a rude, 
strong, good-humoured, unrefined, half-barbarian 
man, who can endure, and fight, and obey orders. 
The Greek is what he was — a dishonest, intelligent, 
chicken-hearted talker, whom nothing apparently 
will deprive of Britain's sympathy as long as he 
quotes Byron and lives in the land of Alcibiades. 
And neither Turk nor Greek can speak the truth ; 
which makes it the more deplorable that so few 
Europeans are found to speak the truth about 
them. 



THE MONOTYPE.i 

It is so complete and provident, foreseeing every 
difficulty and surmounting it, aware of every ad- 
vantage and seizing it, that you can hardly help 
feeling it to be a portent, inexplicable, born out of 
season, without father or mother, or beginning of 
days. 

Yet, though its inventor is a statistician, who 
came upon it not through the study of printing, 
but in the devising of calculating machines, the 
monotype, like every seeming prodigy, is the issue 
of a long development, the offspring of a hundred 
ancestors. Revolution is the child of evolution in 
printing as everywhere else. 

The machine looks modest, and, to anybody 
capable of understanding machines, very simple. 
It stands perhaps 4 feet high, it is 3 feet 8 inches 
long by 3 feet broad, and it weighs only 900 lbs. 
It requires very little power to drive it. The buzz 
of its driving-belt and the click, click of the work 
it is doing hardly makes itself heard at your ear 
above the clatter of Leadenhall Street. Altogether 
it is one of the least ostentatious machines that 
ever made a revolution. But if you look at it closer 
and realise what it is doing, that machine is one of 
the greatest marvels of all the marvelous history of 

*New Review, November, 1897. 
71 



72 THINGS SEEN 

machinery, the crown of over five centuries' devel- 
opment in the most vital of all civilising arts. The 
machine is casting and setting type all by itself — 
setting it, too, more regularly, more clearly, more 
cheaply, and more untiringly than written words 
have ever been set before. 

Click, click, click; and with each click a fire- 
new, shining letter slides out into its place in a 
line of print. Click, click, click, till a line is finished ; 
the line slides up into its place in a column, and the 
machine, before you have finished watching the line 
fall in, has pushed out nearly half the next. No- 
body is touching it — nobody telling it what to say. 
It just goes on clicking out words and words, 
thoughts and thoughts. It is the most human of all 
machines and the most inhuman. It is human in 
its seemingly self-suggested intelligence, inhuman 
in its deliberate yet unresting precision. Unprompt- 
ed and unchecked, it might be clicking out life- 
giving truth or devilish corruption, and clicking it 
out forever. 

Its full name is the Lanston monotype machine ; 
its familiars call it briefly the monotype. It is al- 
most a reliefs — so much you are hypnotised by the 
apparent spontaneity of the thing — to learn that it 
is not saying just what it likes ; that it is, after all, 
like other machines, man's servant. There is a 
paper roll being unwound and re-wound on the 
top of it, punched with holes in various positions 
like the drum of a musical box, which is telling it 
what to say. There is a kind of tank where from 



THE MONOTYPE 73 

time to time it must be fed with metal to cast its 
types from. But within these limitations its activity 
is only bounded by the time required for each type 
to cool ; g-ive it words to set and metal to set them 
with, and it will go on unaided till you like to 
stop it. 

To get a vague idea of its working you must 
begin with the perforated roll. There is a keen- 
faced, clean-shaven young man in spectacles work- 
ing what appears to be a typewriter in one corner 
of the room : that is the captain of the setting ma- 
chine, and the man is the captain of that. The two 
parts make really one machine, and yet the one is 
perfectly independent in place or time of the other. 

The machine's master begins by setting an index : 
the index fixes the length of the line required. Then 
he begins playing on the keys as with a typewriter ; 
only each key, instead of writing a letter, punches 
two round holes in the roll. So he taps letter after 
letter till he has punched a word ; then he taps a 
space and on to the next word. Presently, when 
he is coming to the end of a line, a bell rings. You 
notice a semi-circular dial, just above the bank of 
keys, with a pointer traveling across it. The bell 
means this : the line has now progressed so far that 
another syhable would fill it too full. You must 
now "justify," as printers call it — that is, equalise 
the space between the words of the line. The mono- 
type's method of doing this is, perhaps, the most 
beautiful of all its beauties. There is a registering 
scale which has been following all the movements 



74 THINGS SEEN 

of the operator: it now reveals on the dial, first, 
how much space is over, to be divided equally 
among the spaces between the words ; and second, 
the number of spaces between the words among 
which the residuary space is to be divided. Say 
there is one-tenth of an inch over and there are 
ten spaces : an addition of one-hundredth of an 
inch to each will justify the line. To do such a 
thing by hand means time and distraction of atten- 
tion, and probably inaccuracy after all ; to the mon- 
otype it is child's play. The operator simply taps 
a key which punches yet another hole in the ribbon. 
When the ribbon comes to control the setting ma- 
chine, that hole ensures that the word-spaces shall 
be just one-hundredth above normal size, and the 
line will be justified with absolute mathematical 
exactness. When the ribbon is punched full it is 
lifted off the key-board and fixed on to the casting 
and setting machine. The holes in it correspond 
mathematically with a set of dies comprising all 
the characters and symbols used in type-setting. 
These are carried in a case mounted on a com- 
pound slide, the parts of which move at right angles. 
Air is shot through these holes by a pneumatic 
tube, and the force brings the die required under 
a jet of molten metal. The metal is forced into the 
mould, the type is cast and shot out into the galley. 
The whole thing comes out hind part before and 
upside down ; the justifying holes at the ends of 
each line are thus the first to come under the obser- 
vation of the machine, which casts all the space- 



THE MONOTYPE - 75 

types of the lines accordingly. If there is a mistake 
as to the length of the line, the monotype refuses. 
It stops dead ; the minder puts the error right, and 
the sagacious creature starts on again. When the 
whole galley is set, a proof is pulled and corrected 
in the ordinary way ; each type is an individual, 
so there is no need of re-casting. When the type 
is done with it can either be retained for use, being 
every bit as good as foundry type, or melted up and 
used over again. By reason of its facilities for 
changing the measure of lines, and its accuracy of 
justification, the monotype can set tabular matter 
and over-run illustrations better than this can be 
done by hand. It is the only machine which can 
make full use of capitals and italics as supplied in a 
full fount of type. Other machines can produce 
but lOO characters with a hundred different move- 
ments : it can produce 225 with thirty. To cut 
technicalities, the monotype can do everything that 
printing can ask. It is the child of evolution. Since 
very early in the century machinery has fought the 
compositor ; and though the man has kept his head 
up hitherto, like the man he is, it was certain that in 
the end he must go down. Not down altogether, 
of course, but down as a hand-compositor : a man's 
a man, and will earn his bread whether he trims 
sails or stokes furnaces, whether he picks types out 
of a box into a stick or sits on a seat and hits keys. 
But the earliest efforts of m.achinery left the com- 
positor by hand still easy master of the situation. 
There have been two main families of these, 



^6 THINGS SEEN 

which may conveniently be styled the spout kind 
and the wheel kind. The original begetter of the 
first, Dr. Church, was an American, like Mr. Lan- 
ston to-day ; the inventors who brought it into prac- 
tice. Young and Delcambre, were, again like him, 
not professional printers. Their machine, once more 
like its triumphant descendant of to-day, started 
with a key-board ; the types were lying in grooves 
according to their kinds, and a touch on the key 
released the first in the groove. The letters, suc- 
cessively released, were conducted through devious 
passages, which finally all united in the spout. 
Thence they issued in an endless line ; a second 
operator sat at the end of the spout to cut them 
up into lengths as they emerged, and justify the 
lines so made. It was magnificent, but it did not 
work. Types are more unruly than those who 
know them only as printed letters usually conceive. 
An m and an i, for instance are of very different 
sizes and very different weights. The spout had 
to be broad enough for in, and so i slewed round 
and stuck in the middle, and had to be pried out 
with a bodkin ; meanwhile, portly m was emerging 
with a thud into the receiver and ricochetting into 
the inane. Sometimes the operator at the key- 
board operated too fast, and then while m and i 
were struggling through their tunnels, g came 
bounding along and slipped in at the junction be- 
fore them. If the type was sticky or the passages 
damp all these things became worse. So that the 



THE MONOTYPE "^J 

Spout type of machine, though not unused, never 
conquered the human hand. 

The wheel type was born in 1858, its inventor 
being a journaHst, Dr. Mackie. In this family the 
types were arranged round a wheel — whether a disc 
or a grooved revolving pillar — which is spun round 
and arranged so that the right type stops opposite 
the receiver and slides in. Despite the irrelevant 
suggestions of Monte Carlo and the Buddhist pray- 
ing-machine, this was a much faster and more 
practical kind of machine than the other. But c'^en 
this found difiticulties in working. It wore away 
the feet of the type in the grooves, so that they 
went "off their feet," as the phrase is, and you can- 
not take a type's shoes ofif and turn it out to grass. 
A type is not a butterfly either ; but it can be broken 
on a wheel, and often is, in this kind of machine. 
The wheel machine, from these and other causes, 
was very expensive, and the human hand remained 
undismayed. 

It was a different matter when the linotype ar- 
rived. This machine may be said to mark the 
transition from old to new, for it gave up the strug- 
gle with insubordinate, jamming, breaking types, 
and cast its own type as it went along. The oper- 
ator taps his key, and the tap releases a die and 
brings it into place. The line when set is justified 
by driving up widening steel wedges between the 
words. The molten metal is injected into the line 
of dies, forming a bar of type representing the line. 
This bar must be trimmed, and then it is ready to 



78 THINGS SEEN 

take its place in the galley. The dies are mechan- 
ically conveyed back to their own place. This 
machine was plainly a very great advance. It saved 
the labour involved in justification and the distribu- 
tion of types, after being used, into their proper 
cases ready for use again. It saved cost of type, 
wear and tear of plant, and especially floor space. 
Its victory was neither immediate nor complete, for 
reasons which will appear in a moment; but, for 
the first time, it estabHshed an advantage for the 
machine over the hand. 

Thus was the way prepared for the crowning 
achievement of the monotype. If it appears in- 
ferior in speed to the lintoype because it involves 
the separate operations v;ith the key-board and the 
casting-and-setting machine, it takes its revenge in 
the quality of the printing, in the range of its char- 
acters, in economy, and in convenience. The types 
are clean cut and deep in the shoulder, as it is 
called, so that they offer the promise of the very 
clearest and finest impression. The dies, being 
held in rows in a square case, require mechanical 
movemxcnts equal to only double the square root 
of their total number. If there are 225 characters 
' — fifteen rows of fifteen apiece — there are fifteen 
horizontal and fifteen perpendicular movements to 
bring the dies under the jet of metal, or thirty in all. 
So with forty movements you could use 400 charac- 
ters; with fifty, 625. The linotype needs a separ- 
ate mechanical movement for each character : this 
necessarily limits the number of characters em- 



THE MONOTYPE 79 

ployed, and therewith — as, for instance, by the ex- 
clusion of italics — the range and attractiveness of 
the printing. In point of economy the monotype 
requires less labour than any other machine. Eight 
expert key-board operators can punch rolls enough 
to keep ten machines going; one man can feed and 
mind ten. That means nine men to ten complete 
machines — a complete machine run by a decimal 
fraction of a man! With this and other economies 
the cost of production works out roughly at some- 
thing like one-quarter of that of hand-work. But 
perhaps the niost attractive vista of possibility be- 
fore the monotype is opened by the separability of 
its parts. Small printers can combine in the pur- 
chase and upkeeping of a casting machine, each 
having his own key-board and sending its rolls to 
the central depot to be cast at leisure. This same 
roll can be stored away and kept to infinity. 

It is virtually printed matter, and ready to go on 
the machine and come out in type at any moment. 
With other methods, whether linotype, wheel, 
spout, or hand, if you want to preserve matter — 
say for the second edition of a book — you must 
store away the type itself, taking up space for which 
you must pay rent, and spending money on stereo- 
type plates on which you lose the interest. With 
the monotype you just put away the rolls on a 
shelf. When you want to reprint you take down 
the rolls, put them on the machines, leave a 
man sitting up to feed them, and go to bed ; when 
you v/ake up the monotype has done the rest. 



8o THINGS SEEN 

In this light the apparent slowness involved in 
the separate parts of the monotype turns out a real 
gain in speed. All other setting machines are 
limited in their capacity by the endurance of their 
human operators. Imagine a press of work : when 
your linotypists are tired out you must let your 
machine stand idle while they sleep; your mono- 
typists in the meantime, with their whole attention 
fixed on the mental processes of the key-board, 
with no distraction to the mechanical processes of 
the casting, may be presumed to have held out 
longer, at higher pressure, to have punched more 
than the other men have linotyped. When they go 
home to bed the casting machine will click serenely 
on all night; it wants no food but copy and metal, 
and no sleep at all. 

And now for the most wonderful dream of all. 
No compositor at all, but every author his own 
printer! If the divine fire can be struck out on 
the keys of a typewriter, why not on the keys of 
a monotype? The sage of the future will unlade 
his wisdom in the form of little round holes in a 
brown-paper roll. He will send down the roll to 
his editor or publisher: it will be put on the 
machine, and the machine will turn it out in print 
without the touch of any hand but his own. If this 
can be, our valued friend the compositor turns out 
only a superfluous middleman after all. His profit 
must be cut ofif: he must go. After all, in this 
literary age, it is increasingly easy for him to be- 
come a popular author — a profession sometimes 



THE MONOTYPE 8i 

cleaner than his present one, and very often better 
paid. 

Still, there will always remain one place for the 
compositor: he will make the author's corrections 
in the columns which the monotype has set up. 
The linotype abolishes the cost of corrections by 
abolishing the corrections themselves, and there- 
with incidentally abolishing- literature also. In 
theory, correction is possible with it : it sets its type 
in solid lines, and if you want to add or subtract 
a comma, the whole line must be set over again. 
In practice, the re-setting and re-casting of the 
whole line means too much trouble and time and 
expense; therefore the comma is not corrected, and 
bad work is the result. The reader is annoyed or 
confused or misled by mistakes, or else he is taught 
to believe that in the art of writing trifles don't 
matter. The writer is forced to acquiesce in the 
same heresy. He must not revise and correct, and 
in time, by dint of seeing many scandalous blun- 
ders in his work, learns to accept blunders in spell- 
ing, in grammar, in style, as a necessary condition 
of literature — of which disease literature must 
eventually die. 

You who have seen your noblest sentiments, 
your most resounding phrases, pass under the har- 
row of the linotype will confess that this is no ex- 
aggeration. The linotype made for bad writing: 
the monotype, giving out work as easy of correc- 
tion as hand-set types, if it does not make directly 
for good writing, at least it does not make against 



82 THINGS SEEN 

it. It does affirmatively make for good printing. 
In the meantime, it is permitted to welcome a ma- 
chine which, whilst, like most of its breed, it makes 
life swifter and more exciting, does not, like many, 
leave it uglier than it found it. 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY.^ 

An attempt to estimate the philosophical value of 
such a book as Mr. Balfour's 'Foundations of Be- 
lief in the pages of a finite magazine is beset by 
at least one unhappy difficulty. Dissent from its 
conclusions has the show of misappreciation of its 
merits. Let it be insisted at once, therefore, that 
though to many men the final conclusions of this 
treatise will be unsatisfying, and some of its tribu- 
tary arguments unconvincing, there is no man that 
can afiford to disdain it. No truth is tlie whole 
truth, and no sincere quest after truth can end in 
total disappointment. It is a commonplace that 
man learns most from those with whom he least 
agrees, and this is especially so with a thinker so 
keenly sensitive to the philosophic atmosphere of 
the hour as Mr. Balfour. Je mcprise Locke, said 
Schelling ; but Locke had been long enough in his 
coffin to justify the liberty. Nowadays we are all 
pretty unanimous in misprizing Schelling; but Mr. 
Balfour is either to be hailed as a saviour or ap- 
proached warily as a dangerous if illuminative 
heretic. The enemy he attacks is the established 
philosophic church of the day : it has been attacked, 
and indeed overthrown, in its earlier incarnations, 
but the bare fact of its resuscitation points the 

*New Review, March, 1895. 
83 



84 THINGS SEEN 

necessity of a new onslaught. Naturalism — there 
is no need to depart from Mr. Balfour's own term; 
it passes variously under the aliases of Positivism 
and Agnosticism, and may most handily be de- 
scribed as the creed of Mr. Herbert Spencer — fights 
to-day with the new weapon of Evolution ; it was 
necessary that the weapon should be turned against 
it. This Mr. Balfour has done with an unsparing 
trenchancy, a dazzling deftness of dialectical fence, 
a subtlety of distinction, and a power of epigram 
and of eloquence far surpassing any of its original 
masters. He has hewn Naturalism asunder and 
riddled it to shreds, and overthrown it and trampled 
on it ; and if he has not slain it outright, the one 
reason is that its professors are not open to phil- 
osophic conviction. For, indeed, the creed was 
never at any time a philosophy, nor expounded by 
philosophers. Its gospellers are either, like Pro- 
fessor Huxley, investigators of science who have 
strayed beyond their province, or anti-theological 
gladiators like Mr. Frederick Harrison, or else, like 
Mr. Herbert Spencer, they have mistaken gener- 
ahsations in natural science for the nearest human 
possibilities of absolute truth. Such as Naturalism 
was, Mr. Balfour leaves it without a rag to cover 
its speculative nakedness. Starting out to explain 
the world without any ultimate principle of person- 
ality, it cannot give a coherent account of one 
single moment of human experience. Let that be 
said once for all ; let any one to whom it sounds 
treasonable read the first chapter of the Second 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY 85 

Part once for all. But it will be more profitable for 
the estimate of the book as a whole to review it 
rather from the aspect of its constructive parts. 
"In order that the views here advocated," we are 
told at the outset, "may be seen in the highest re- 
lief, it is convenient to exhibit them against the 
background of some other and contrasted system 
of thought." Convenient it is, no doubt ; but is 
it quite fair to judge the stability of any body of 
conclusions by so shaky a structure as Naturalism? 
Is not the foil too dull for a fair valuation of the 
gem? Will it not be better, in fine, to take Mr. 
Balfour's contentions on their merits, and inspect 
them against the background of any more plausible 
theory that their analysis may afiford? 

Logically, Mr. Balfour's argument begins — and, 
for that matter, ends, as we shall see later — in "the 
ineffaceable incongruity between the origin of our 
beliefs, in so far as these can be revealed to us by 
science, and the beliefs themselves." But for this 
compendium we have to wait until the last chapter : 
the actual order of statement is rather morpholog- 
ical than logical : it proceeds as the theory would 
grow up in the theorist's own mind rather than in 
conformity with the conveniences of exposition. 
We begin — not altogether without reminiscence of 
the maxim, "Abuse plaintiff's attorney" — with an 
examination of the Naturalistic accounts of moral- 
ity, aesthetics, and epistemology. Viewing these 
generically he finds that, while the evolutionary 
process was their origin, they are far from being its 



86 THINGS SEEN 

ends. They are merely accidents in its course — 
backwaters lying off the perpetual and universal 
stream of the world's tendency. Bastards of the 
struggle for life, they can claim no dignity of their 
own and cherish no hope of perpetuity when once 
they have served their turn. They came into the 
world as devices, subservient to the continued ex- 
istence of man ; they will go out of it in the inevit- 
able day when they no longer minister to it. Is 
this a creed for self-respecting men? asks Mr. Bal- 
four. Can belief and feeling continue to co-exist 
in such intolerable antagonism? Possibly not; 
though we must remember such jars are oftener 
composed by mutual accommodation than by the 
utter destruction of one or other of the jarring 
partners. Yet, spite of this, the argument seems 
largely irrelevant and doubtfully valid. It is not 
the habit of the philosopher to ask first whether 
this or that is pleasant to believe, but whether it is 
true. And, supposing that it is true, is it, after 
all, so humiliating? Amoeba man was and autom- 
aton he shall be, says Mr. Balfour, half-dead to 
know that he must die. But, even so, it is our 
present, not our past or future, that concerns us. 
Mr. Balfour calls it humour "to prevent us assum- 
ing any airs of superiority over other and more 
powerful members of the same family of phe- 
nomena more permanent than ourselves." Yet 
surely this invocation of humour is but a back- 
handed argument. Even on the crassest Natural- 
istic view, humour is a more ingenious and 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY 87 

complicated conjunction of atoms than heat. If 
the phenomena could laugh back it would be dif- 
ferent. But while I can laugh at them, it troubles 
me little that in a few billions of years they may 
perhaps reduce my nth grandson to the same un- 
laughing molecules as themselves. 

Human activities, it may thus be argued, have 
their dignity in their exercise, as determined by 
such rough approximation as we can make, 
through their structure, to their function in the 
world. To some tempers, at least, human life, with 
all its diverse equipments and possibilities, is an 
end in itself. If there is anything worthy the know- 
ing and feeling and doing, it remains worthy so 
long as evolution allows man to remain capable of 
it. And is our doom, after all, so inevitable? No 
doubt all that makes man human was evolved, in 
the beginnings, by accident. The struggle for life 
first made us moral and sesthetical and rational, in 
order that we might be better adapted animals. 
But that was only in the very beginning. Here, as 
elsewhere, Mr. Balfour appears to confuse the 
source of a thing with the thing itself. For with 
the dawn of consciousness begins a fresh struggle, 
whose sphere is in consciousness alone — the strug- 
gle of ideals, the struggle of ideas. This is grafted 
on to the old struggle for bare life, and partly 
supersedes it. Just as the struggle first entered 
into the world with organic life, this new mental 
struggle began with consciousness. Ideas fight for 
survival in the mind as men fight for survival in 



88 THINGS SEEN 

the outer world, and the former fight reacts on the 
latter. It is to this purely intellectual struggle that 
we owe, and shall owe, all the more complex de- 
velopments of aesthetics, thought, and morality. 
Whence otherwise comes the power that makes 
men give up their bread for their art, the hope of 
posterity for learning, life itself for their country? 
The primeval will to live becomes modified into the 
will to live in such-and-such a way : we enrich our 
conception of life with certain minimum require- 
ments of virtue and refinement. Artificial selection 
begins to replace natural. As years go on, this 
struggle within the mind will be more and more. 
Amoebae we were, it is true; but on this view we 
look back on our ancestry with the juster pride 
of him who has risen from below rather than of 
him who, at the most, has not fallen. And if the 
phenomena kill us ofif in the end, at least we shall 
perish in the bloom. 

The Naturalist is hardly in a position to put for- 
ward such a suggestion as the foregoing. But we 
have given up the Naturalist and are trying Mr. 
Balfour's contentions for ourselves, so that we may 
derive from it a hope that, even with a Naturahstic 
origin, things are not quite so desperate with us as 
he would have us think. He now leaves this quasi- 
ethical region and proceeds to attack Naturalism 
as a philosophy. This chapter is a model of de- 
structive analysis, brilliant and sound, subtle and 
perspicuous. He demonstrates beyond all power 
of refutation, or even of reply, that the hypothesis 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY 89 

of Materialism — for it is to Materialism that, in the 
limit, Naturalism always comes — cannot state 
coherently the simplest facts of our experience. 
This part of the book, therefore, we might pass by 
but for one discussion which may come in usefully 
later. In his analysis of Naturalism, piling refuta- 
tion on refutation, Mr. Balfour takes occasion to 
make some criticisms of sense-perception. In an 
immediate experience by sense-perception — Mr. 
Balfour's example is a tree — "the scientific man 
knows very well that the material object only re- 
sembles his idea of it in certain particulars) — 
extension, solidity, and so forth^ — and that in re- 
spect of such attributes of colour and illumination 
there is no resemblance at all." Here, then, argues 
he, is a break-down in the Naturalist's means of 
knowledge, which can only be explained by the 
hypothesis that these immediate experiences, on 
which he depends for all his knowledge, "are 
merely mental results of cerebral changes ; all else 
is a matter of inference." So that we are con- 
fronted by the horrible cataclysm that Naturalism 
regards the world thus, while her ally. Science, 
works only on the assumption that it has an inde- 
pendent material existence. As against Naturalism 
the hit is palpable. But to those who believe that 
the explanation of the world must rest on the per- 
cipient self as well as on the percept — and the point 
is already fair, since Mr. Balfour has told us that 
"there is no theoretical escape from the ultimate 
T " — it need beget no suspicion of our trusty 



90 THINGS SEEN 

friends, the senses. To the perceiving mind the 
tree is a tree, however science may analyse it. You 
may call it, if you will, an extended solid object 
plus vibrations, ethereal undulations, absorption of 
most part of the same, reflection of the green 
residue, incidence on the eye, arrangement on the 
retina, stimulation of the optic nerve, and molec- 
ular change in the cerebral hemispheres. But in 
the long-run it is more convenient to call it a green 
tree, and in the theory of knowledge it is just as 
correct. The doubt as to the objective existence 
of the material world, which Mr. Balfour is con- 
tinually raising, is equally irrelevant. As it is the 
earhest of metaphysical problems to suggest itself, 
so it is the first to be dissipated. In reality, the 
problem has no meaning at all. Whether our per- 
ceptions represent independent objects or cerebral 
changes makes no sort of difference either in specu- 
lation or practice. In either case they are equally 
independent of and complementary to the per- 
cipient subject. In a later chapter (the first of Part 
IV.) Mr. Balfour returns to this subject. Ingen- 
iously deriving our unqualified belief in sense- 
perceptions from the undoubted benefit such a 
belief would confer in an early stage of the struggle 
for existence, he argues thence that though this 
beHef is "more inevitable and universal" than, for 
example, the belief in God, it is not more worthy. 
He nowhere clearly lays down any canon of the 
worthiness of beliefs, nor is it altogether clear how 
this should be done : up to now the worthiness of 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY QI 

a belief has been generally held to be determined 
by its truth. The belief in God can hardly be 
worthier because it has to do with a higher human 
function; for higher must mean more specific to 
man — there being no question of the morality of 
beliefs, as such — and nothing is more specific to 
man than thought, of which sense-perception is a 
vital element. Nor is it a matter of "faith" — or 
inference, as many would prefer to call it — since 
that enters into both. Nor of the inevitable allow- 
ance for error, since this is at least as great in 
theological beliefs as in perceptions, from which 
theology is ultimately derived ; and neither the last 
nor the first link in a coherent chain of thought is 
any worthier than the other. So that we may ap- 
proach the next division of the subject with our 
confidence still unimpaired — remembering always 
the small allowance for physiological or inferential 
errors — in what remains the primary coin in the 
currency of thought. 

And now rises before us the fair formless form of 
the Transcendental Ego, Duly Mr. Balfour de- 
duces the portentous abstraction from the possibil- 
ity of sentient experience. And you would sup- 
pose that with this and sense-perception as yet re- 
maining to all but the Materialist, even fastidious 
he would begin to construct. But no ! He con- 
tinues his wild iconoclastic career. He brushes 
aside the theories of those who, by the aid of "ideas 
of relation," would constitute the world of objects 
out of the subject self ; for does not the subject owe 



92 THINGS SEEN 

its metaphysical existence to the very objects it thus 
complacently proceeds to beget? So with the sin- 
ister souls that dare elevate the abstract Ego into 
the Divine : how can you venerate, as the God of 
love, a creature of metaphysics whose whole being 
is summarised in the fact that it is not an object of 
sense? But there remains a third possibility. 
Take the objective world and the abstract self as 
two : can they not figure out a universe between 
them? Mr. Balfour does not smile upon this 
possibility. He does not find, for instance, that 
causation is to be deduced from these elements 
with due inexorability. But what, ultimately, is 
causation? Popularly the cause of anything is 
that on which it inevitably follows ; more thought- 
fully stated, it is that without which it cannot exist. 
Then what is the cause, let us say, of a drawing- 
room fire? It follows inevitably (when properly 
conducted) on the application of a match; without 
the match it could not exist. But is the match the 
only thing that fulfils the definition? Could the 
fire exist without the materials of which it is itself 
composed, without the human agency that placed 
these in position, without the oxygen in the air? 
Come a step farther : on this showing, is not the 
soil in which the wood grew, is not the man that 
cut it down, and the father that begat him, and the 
settled social state that allowed his father to devote 
a peaceful mind to the propagation of a son, — are 
not all these things as much the cause of the fire 
in the drawing-room as is the match? And could 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY 93 

not the list be extended for ever and for ever until 
nothing that is known to man were omitted ? We 
come to this conclusion, then: that the cause of 
each thing is everything else. Unless everything 
else were as it is, each thing could not be as it is. 
And that fact — the fact that the whole system works 
together to each of its resultants — is what we call 
the Uniformity of Nature. Nature cannot but be 
uniform, seeing that nothing is added nor taken 
away, and all that there is of her is concentrated in 
each one of her processes. Now, is not the Trans- 
cendental Ego competent to have knowledge of this 
system? To suppose an abstract principle cogni- 
sant of cause sounds at first an assumption auda- 
cious and unwarrantable. But the process sketched, 
viewed more narrowly, is mere matter of addition 
and subtraction. Hath not a Transcendental Ego 
memory and comparison, perception of presence 
and absence in phenomena, and a unity of ac- 
cumulated truth? By the hypothesis it has all 
this. All this is just what it is for, just what it is. 
May we not, then, disallow Mr. Balfour's objection 
on the score of causation ? 

Through the Ego and phenomena, therefore, we 
rise to a bilateral conception of the world. On 
the one side is the self, on the other its objects, 
which the self is able to schematise into a system 
of interdependent relations which exert a uniform 
pressure on any one point. It is true that this 
conception does not top the summit of the phil- 
osophic ideal. Philosophy, to have her heart's 



94 THINGS SEEN 

desire, must needs envisage the world as mani- 
festation of one principle, not two. Yet we might 
rest in this dualism with a very tolerable pro- 
visional satisfaction if nothing better can be attain- 
ed. It is true that this compromise cannot be any 
satisfaction to those who were set on regarding 
the self as the index of God. Mr. Balfour himself 
very cogently hints, if he does not explicitly demon- 
strate, why this is not so. The self is not God, 
and the related system of its objects is not God. 
Each depends on the other, and God must be 
Absolute, If there is to be any Absolute, it must 
be found in the fusion of the two, in the whole 
of which they are the related parts. But such 
an Absolute is beyond relation, and therefore be- 
yond human knowledge, which is itself a relation; 
the part can have no cognisance of the whole. So 
that this Absolute, this God, is unknown and 
unknowable to man; it is merely another Thing- 
in-Itself, unmeaning and null. The theory, indeed, 
summarily expressed, justifies the statement that 
there is no God. But that is no objection to the 
theory. We started on it, not to find a God at 
any cost, but to find what there was to be found. 
One more objection to this view Mr. Balfour al- 
leges, and this is a more head-splitting one than the 
others. The Ego as we have deduced it is a mere 
knowing-machine. But the self we live with — 
the Empirical Ego of the psychologist — is one 
that feels and mourns and extends itself over body 
and legs and toes. Now we cannot say that this 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY 95 

self is the Ego, because it is the object of the 
Ego's perceptions. Nor can we conscientiously 
say that our past and our feelings and our body are 
no more ourself than our chair or our table. Here, 
then, is the problem of self-consciousness, perhaps 
impossible of solution, and certainly so within any 
possible limits. It is the less pressing because 
for metaphysics the Transcendental Ego is all the 
self we want. For empirical psychology the self 
is mainly cerebral changes; for ethics it is the 
sense of freedom. Much criticism might be di- 
rected upon Mr. Balfour's objections to Determin- 
ism, though they are not, in the main, novel. But 
again we must pass on, merely marking down that 
we have, in this Dualistic-Idealistic theory, a 
skeleton reconciliation of the world, unhinged, it is 
true, at one important joint, and in much need of 
supplementing in every member. Still, it seems a 
beginning, and we can but wonder what better Mr. 
Balfour has to offer to us. 

Mr. Balfour, meanwhile, is discursively driving 
the Juggernaut of his dialectic over most of the 
guides that mankind has looked to for truth. 
Sense-perception we have tried above to patch 
together again ; later, language as an accurate 
vehicle of thought goes down before him, as it 
must before anybody that cares to tilt hard enough 
at it. Next he comes to consider the rival claims 
of reason and authority. It is an admirably 
perspicuous chapter, though again not conspicu- 
ously novel. To such as plume themselves over- 



96 THINGS SEEN 

much on their rationality it will be somewhat dis- 
quieting to see exposed in black and white before 
them the infinite smallness of that portion of their 
judgments which is based immediately on reason. 
No man, indeed, has any direct concern with rea- 
son except the philosopher who puzzles after prin- 
ciples or the plain man who attempts rarely, and 
with halting casuistry, to apply them. Infinitely 
small, if we rest the calculation on the bare number 
of judgments each puts down to its score, is rea- 
son's part. But when Mr. Balfour argues that au- 
thority is more characteristic of man than reason, is 
he not misled by this purely irrelevant considera- 
tion of the number of judgments into which each 
enters ? He admits that both are necessary to intel- 
lectual hfe; why, then, put either above the other? 
Nothing can be more than essential. Moreover, if 
either is to take precedence over the other, there 
are some good grounds for urging that it should 
be reason. Authority cannot move a step with- 
out it, for even the acceptance of authority means 
a latent syllogism : "It must be true, for Huxley 
says so, and he knows." Moreover, in every 
statement that is taken on authority there exists 
the reasoning by which it was arrived at, held 
in solution, and capable of being re-reasoned 
would a man but take the trouble. Reason is 
there, but you must call for it. Unless Mr. Bal- 
four postulate an infallible source of inspiration, 
every dictum of authority must be in its original 
statement the work of reason. And if he does 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY 97 

so postulate, then he must either justify his pos- 
tulate by reason or else ask us to take him for an 
infallible source of inspiration in himself. 

Mr. Balfour has now examined various forms of 
belief in three aspects — by the light of their con- 
sequences, their reasons, and their causes. He has 
found their consequences deplorable, their reasons 
fallacious, their causes misunderstood. This can 
hardly apply to Naturalistic beliefs solely, for he 
proceeds thence to draw his deductions as positive 
truth, and indeed he cannot have written a book 
with the same ambition of producing a better 
creed than Naturalism. So far, then, as these 
forms of belief go, they promise man a mean life 
and a contemptible death, they will not bear an 
examination of their rational foundation, and they 
rest on such alien causes as authority and the mis- 
apprehension of terms. With such modifications 
as the foregoing discussions may have brought 
into this view, we may now follow him as he 
advances from this shifting ground to the deduc- 
tion of the Deity. Let it be imputed to him for 
courage that the sand shifts beneath him, since he 
is not of those who shipwreck reason and call in 
God from heaven to set up the world again. His 
attempt is to deduce the existence of God by 
mental process ; it is an argument "from needs to 
their satisfaction." This curious process, hitherto 
unknown to logicians — and whatever just deduc- 
tions Mr. Balfour may make from the validity of 
logic, he can hardly argue in any other medium — 



98 THINGS SEEN 

appears to be of a quasi-transcendental character. 
As the necessities of certain beliefs about the sen- 
sible world lead us to the deduction of the self, 
so the necessities of beliefs about the universe as 
a whole lead us to the deduction of a God. We 
cannot get rid of our difficulties about the world, 
but by "the presupposition that it was the work of 
a rational Being who made it intelHgible, and at the 
same time made us, in however feeble a fashion, 
able to understand it." In a feeble fashion, indeed, 
it would seem, since it is just this lack of under- 
standing that drives Mr. Balfour to postulate his 
rational Being. The first criticism that suggests 
itself is not recondite. If we are to be justified in 
such assumptions by a mere defect of understand- 
ing, are there not a thousand other assumptions 
equally plausible? I might compose all my per- 
plexities by postulating that I made the world when 
I was a baby, and conduct it while I am asleep. 
But it is doubtful if this view would command any 
wide measure of support. 

Once more: consider what is meant by a need. 
Is the need that compels the belief in God of the 
same nature as the need that forces us to the belief 
in the material world ? Mr. Balfour asserts that it 
is not less stringent. If he means our belief in the 
materiality of the world, that is true. But belief in 
the material world, in the proper significance of the 
term — bearing in mind the fact that it is all one 
whether the material world is or is not represented 
by anything beyond cerebral processes — is an ut- 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY 99 

terly different thing. From this we cannot escape : 
unless we believe, with reasonable deductions, what 
we see and hear, we cannot even begin to know or 
to act. We could not live in the world a moment 
without it. But the need for the belief in God 
means no more, at the most, than that without it we 
cannot know all that we can imagine ourselves as 
knowing, that we cannot do right so continuously 
as we can imagine ourselves as doing. On the face 
of it, then, this argument from need to its satisfac- 
tion is an illicit one : the need is not such as to drive 
us, as a primordial condition of human existence, 
to satisfy it with a stable belief. We have every 
call to make our own lives coherent, but what call 
have we to make the universe coherent by aid 
of the first hypothesis that comes to hand? The 
belief in God is not truly a need at all, unless om- 
niscience and perfection be needs : men think 
loyally, and feel proportionately, and act rightly 
without it every day. And why should they not? 
For consider the nature of satisfaction of which Mr. 
Balfour's need is capable. He feels it as a need, 
because he cannot explain the world, and cannot 
feel assured of right action without it. But can he 
know and act any better with it? Not one jot. 
The intellectual problems that were dark before are 
dark still ; the moral quagmires are as desperately 
trackless as ever they were. Nor could it be other- 
wise. For what compels us to leave our philoso- 
phies half-finished on the roadside, and entangles 
us in inextricable mazes about the smallest action 

i-.otC. 



loO THINGS SEEN 

that may be good or bad, is not ignorance of gen- 
eral principles but of particular facts. The science 
is always there, but we want the omniscience. Now 
from the belief in God can proceed no knowledge 
of the unnumbered accidental circumstances of life. 
Therefore there comes from it no increase of knowl- 
edge or certitude of goodness. No: the need is no 
need, and the satisfaction is no satisfaction. All 
that this faith can do is to instil a comfortable con- 
fidence in the origin of the world as an alien auxil- 
iary to knowledge, and in its guidance as an alien 
auxiliary to morals. The most that could result 
from it would be the statement, "There is a God," 
grateful as a consolation but worthless as a truth. 
And confidence answers not to a need, but to a 
hope. But it is not competent even for this. It is 
no more possible for hope to realise the future, than 
for remorse to annihilate the past. 

But let us assume the reality of the need and its 
satisfaction. Let us further assume that the con- 
ception of God as creator and guide is its one pos- 
sible satisfaction. Of what nature is the conception 
thus secured? Clearly, as the result of a trans- 
cendental process, the conception is governed by 
the conditions that gave it birth. The trans- 
cendental self is an abstract principle unifying the 
disconnected phenomena presented in sensitive ex- 
perience. Even so, this transcendental deity is an 
abstract principle unifying the phenomena pre- 
sented by the intellectual and moral conditions of 
the world. The world, says Mr. Balfour, is an ab- 



MR. BALFOUR'S PHILOSOPHY lOI 

surdity without creation or guidance ; very well, in- 
fer creation and guidance. More than this we have 
no authority to claim. And then, in a moment, we 
suddenly come upon Mr. Balfour speaking of "a 
living God!" Who is hypostatising the abstract 
now? He is straying as far outside his mandate 
as any Fichte making the Ego rebound on nothing, 
and bounce back in the form of a material world. 
God, by the hypothesis, is a causative and a guiding 
principle, and there is no possible right to attribute 
one shred more of meaning to the conception than 
Vk'hat is supplied by the method of its deduction. Is 
it needful to discuss the value of this result? Such 
a God is worthless and unmeaning : the result is as 
jejune as the process is illegitimate. This, then, is 
the end of the long quest — a baseless assumption, a 
fulfilment illicitly begotten by an imagined need on 
an illusive satisfaction, an identical proposition, an 
empty formula, a Nothing. Sooner than that, let 
us go back to our old paths that seem to conduct us 
now and again a step onward, even though it may 
be no step nearer the goal. Let us turn again and 
maze ourselves with our broken ingenious relations, 
and scrape ourselves with our blind industrious 
scalpels. 



"LITTLE EYOLF."^ 

To sit down on a chair before a desk and criticise 
Ibsen on paper with a pen, by the light of the ordi- 
nary canons of dramatic art, seems almost a sacri- 
lege. There is that individuality about Ibsen that 
constrains even sane minds to envisage him either 
an unhoped-for anticipation of the Kingdom of 
Heaven or a painfully morbid development of the 
Abomination of Desolation. It is laid on Mr. Will- 
iam Archer's conscience to make him talk a shamb- 
ling, if sometimes forcible, English that is not like 
any other of the tongues of men. There is a 
quaintness in the provincial view of life native to 
Norway, where they make up in the theory of 
modern civilisation what is wanting in the practice 
of it. And there is an essential individuality — 
God-sent or Devil-born, it does not matter — in the 
perverse, anarchic, fearless, iconoclastic character of 
the man himself which struggles to the surface of 
every play. The flavour of all these you either like 
or you do not: and accordingly Ibsen is either a 
compendium of the seven names of the prophet, or 
a convenient root for words significant of mental 
and moral debasement. But there is always a 
neutral zone for criticism in the work of any man 
that tries to be an artist. It may be, or may not, 

' New Review, January 1895. 
102 



"LITTLE EYOLF" I03 

that Ibsen sees what play ought to be written : but 
does he write a play well when he sees it? Being 
here outside the jurisdiction of vice and virtue, we 
need not be afraid to answer that he does. Ibsen 
knows his business. He can make a play: "Little 
Eyolf," like the rest, is a work of skilled joinery, 
made, and made by hand. As mere workmanship, 
the best pieces of Ibsen's maturity — "The Doll's 
House," "Rosmersholm," "Hedda Gabler"— are in 
no way less finished than the articles turned out by 
the renowned Sardou-machine. As the workman- 
ship of a man who conceives himself to be wrestling 
with great and wonderful material, the turbulent 
Norseman stands in some respects nearer the plane 
of Sophocles than do most men who have con- 
structed plays among the barbarians. In his best 
work you will hardly find one word thrown away. 
The casual inanities of the first act loom like omens 
through the vistas of the last. The irony of the 
drama is drawn to its tensest. Every speech adds 
a touch of character, a breath of atmosphere, a 
nerve to the dramatic emotion. The subject is knit 
together by a hundred cords ; it holds together with 
the adhesive unity that is the formal standard of 
artistic triumph. That is Ibsen at his best. But 
we may doubt if at present, in this technical prov- 
ince at least, Ibsen still stands at his best. Not but 
in "Little Eyolf" there is firm characterisation, 
dramatic irony, economy of the irrelevant depend- 
ence of part on part. But the work is not so tight 
as it used to be. Asta AUmers allows herself to 



I04 THINGS SEEN 

contribute a good many remarks to the conversa- 
tion that contribute little to the revelation of her 
own character and nothing- to the play. And this is 
fatal, because Ibsen's dialogue makes no pretence 
to intrinsic brilliance. The moment it begins to be 
irrelevant, it collapses all in a heap to the merest 
flat of inconsequent and even laughable banality. 

Yet a few gaps of disconnected commonplace in 
the midst of much pregnant writing are of slight 
moment : they merely underline the fact that Ibsen 
is growing older. Nor is it of importance that this 
very dramatic pregnancy demands a second read- 
ing, or a reading preparatory to a hearing. If you 
mean to dig deep into the heart of man within the 
compass of three acts, you must pack the rubble 
pretty closely. But "Little Eyolf" is marred by a 
far worse blemish. The dialogue, in the main, is 
adequate to express what it means to express. But 
the plot is not thus adequate, or rather there are 
two plots — or, rather, it is hard to say how many 
and what plots there are. "Little Eyolf," to con- 
tinue its analysis on the formal side, is ruined by a 
fault of construction. It sets out to consider the 
case of a husband and wife, who indirectly by their 
own fault, lose their one crippled child. That is quite 
a fair motive for an art that deals with character. 
The central characters are weak, but not abnormally 
weak, and it is the gain of literature that they 
should be taken in hand by such as Ibsen. He 
faces the situation with penetrating insight and un- 
flinching logic. But, most unluckily for him, this 



"LITTLE EYOLF" 105 

%vill not make a play. The effect of such a catas- 
trophe on the parents is not in itself an adequate 
motive for dramatic treatment. Such a calamity 
will work changes. But it will work them slowly; 
by degrees they will manifest themselves from 
within, as the legacy of the one tremendous blow, 
and not as the effects of nev; causes acting from 
outside. What has the drama, whose field is the 
clash of personality on personality, to do with such 
a psychological morphology? Given these facts 
alone, the play could assume but one shape. Alfred 
and Rita would come out on the stage singly or to- 
gether, at imaginary interv^als, let us say, of a fort- 
night, briefly to diagnose their souls and announce 
that they were going on as badly as was to be ap- 
prehended. Even as a duologue the thing could 
never be played, unless the apostle of modernity 
were to go back and borrow a chorus of yEschylus 
to help fill in his blanks for him. 

In the face of this impossibility, what does Ibsen 
do? He must dovetail a character or two on to 
Allmers and Rita to help them out with it. Hence 
Asta Allmers and Borgheim. Borgheim is not of 
much greater consequence to us than he is to the 
Allmers family — a very pleasant acquaintance, 
whom we should miss and learn to do without. He 
is a firmly-drawn character, and he enriches the 
world of truth with the aphorism that "labour and 
trouble one can always get through alone, but it 
takes two to be glad." But his concern with the 
play is purely atmospheric. He is just the "open- 



lo6 THINGS SEEN 

air boy" that he wished to see constructed out of 
little Eyolf. He comes in Hke a blast of keen 
mountain wind and flings up into your nostrils the 
stufify air of the home of Allmers. His glad 
straightforward energy is the measure of their wan- 
dering helplessness. The truth is that, in Borg- 
heim, Ibsen actually has gone back to the Greek 
chorus — such chorus as in these days he is allowed 
to employ. Borgheim is no more than a subli- 
mated kind of stage property, like the doctor in 
"The Doll's House," and the gentleman who bor- 
rows half-crowns and ideals in "Rosmersholm;" 
his function is purely mechanical ; it is a confession 
of impotence, perhaps; but who is weak man, to 
write plays by the book of aesthetic? Our own 
dramatists who season their works with character 
parts, as per salary list, will doubtless furnish the 
first stone. 

But Asta is on quite a different footing, and is, 
indeed, a shameless intruder. She is simply thrown 
into the plot to save it from burning out for lack 
of fuel. As long as she is her brother's sister she is 
well enough. If the house of mourning is the post 
of duty to the very deceased wife's sister, how much 
more to the deceased son's aunt ? In the analysis of 
Alfred Allmers under shock it arrives by logical pro- 
cess that he turns from the unsympathetic wife to 
the more sufficient sister. But even that is not 
enough to make an acting play. And so out comes 
the family portfolio, and out of the portfolio the late 
mother's letters, and behold ! Asta is not Alfred's 



"LITTLE EYOLF" I07 

sister at all, but our old friend Regina the other way 
about, and Rebecca West the other end up, and 
Elida Goldenlove the other side round, and one 
touch of incest makes the whole gallery of them 
kith. Worked in skilfully no doubt it is, but it is 
a hackney dramatist's trick, flouting you with its 
arbitrariness and utter divorcement from the inevit- 
ability of real drama. The crisis between Alfred 
and Asta is wantonly pasted on to back the totter- 
ing interest of the real play. And time-worn and 
impertinent as it is, it is so much stronger for the 
stage and the dramatic interaction of characters, 
that for the time it usurps the attention. So that 
the play ends twice. It ends at the supposititious 
crisis not half-way through the last act. And then 
you remember that this was not the play after all. 
And Alfred and Rita stand up and spin ofif the rest 
of the play out of their own entrails with no particu- 
lar reference to the other characters, or each other, 
or anything else. 

In the technical aspect of his art, therefore, when 
it is judged by the exacting tests his own technical 
mastery challenges, Ibsen has for the first time 
achieved a failure. For the first time he has set out 
to write a play that could not be written, and at- 
tempted to rescue it with a play that in its essentials 
he has written before. If he had kept rigidly to the 
death of Eyolf and the contrasting sorrows of his 
parents, he could have held no theatre in the world 
for an hour. Mourning for the dead is a narrative, 
not a dramatic emotion. If he had preferred the 



Io8 THINGS SEEN 

Story of Asta and Allmers, he could have written a 
strong- play, but it would have been an inverted re- 
flection of "Ghosts," and an exact double of 
Goethe's "Geschwister." As it is, he has written a 
Siamese twin of a play which all his unmatched 
dexterity cannot restrain from reciprocally pulling 
itself by its own leg. 

But it would be affectation to pretend that it is of 
any enthralling interest to anybody whether, re- 
garded as a stage-play, "Little Eyolf" is a good 
stage-play or not. It is for the joy of lustier debates 
than these that we look to our Ibsen. What of the 
Problem? And the Lesson? And the Psychology? 
And the Realism and the Rat-Wife ? Especially the 
Rat-Wife ; she is the newest, so that most of the 
inquiries will naturally be directed to her address. 
Here is more symbolism, and what are we to say 
of the supernatural in the drama? And who is the 
Rat-Wife, anyhow? And what does she stand for? 
And what was the heart-quaking Mopseman doing 
in that bag? But, seriously, need we bother about 
the Rat-Wife? If you must know, she symbolises 
Death, and she has no business to. The champions 
of Passive Acceptance, my Ibsen right or wrong, 
need not trouble to re-harness the ghost of Hamlet's 
father. Ibsen himself has set his seal to it that the 
only ghost admissible to the theatre in these days is 
the inherited characteristic. In any case. Death 
the Assuager does not take the fiord steamer down 
to Christiania, nor would any pure-bred hell-hound 
condescend to be led round cottages by a string. 



"LITTLE EYOLF" 109 

The unpitied fate of "The Master Builder" is proof 
enough that drama to-day must either be natural 
or else m.ake it quite plain that it means to be 
imperturbably supernatural. It is enough to say 
that northern fairy-tales will play such tricks with 
northern imaginations as they glide into old age. 
The beldam has strayed out of "Brand" or "Peer 
Gynt" into society where there is no place for her. 
As for the Problem and the Lesson, it is gratify- 
ing to be able for once to assure the public that they 
may be approached without suspicion. There are 
more lessons come out of Ibsen's plays than ever 
went into them. The human mind could extract a 
lesson out of the "Nibelungenlied" if it thought fit ; 
it habitually draws precepts from the "Song of Solo- 
mon." It is true that Ibsen lends currency to the 
superstition by taking for his characters men under 
the influence of dominant ideas — specialising upon* 
one side of them, as with the optimist and the pessi- 
mist in "The Wild Duck." But to deduce therefrom 
that Ibsen is a pessimist rather than an optimist is 
much the same as inferring from the superiority of 
"La Bete Humaine" to "Le Reve" that M. Zola 
thinks a locomotive-engine is better than a cathe- 
dral. For the Problem, that is, of course, a serious 
matter. Playgoers — how often must you go to the 
play to become a playgoer? — are divided into their 
camps under the banners of the Problem play and 
the other sort of play. Perhaps the exactest pos- 
sible definition of the Problem play is a play like 
"The Second Mrs. Tanqueray." It seems cruel to 



no THINGS SEEN 

stamp upon the laudable efforts of the public and 
the 'Daily Telegraph' to differentiate between kinds 
of plays ; but it should be explained, with respect, 
that every play is either a Problem play or not a 
play at all. The heathen Aristotle himself was able 
to point out that every play is divided into two 
parts, the binding and the loosing, the prob- 
lem and the solution. If there is no problem, 
there is no situation, no difficulty, no play 
of character, no drama. Problem is common to 
"Philoctetes" and "Charley's Aunt;" and if there 
could be such a thing as a play in virtue, not of 
problem, but of the fact that it is spoken from a 
stage into the theatre, then "Money" would be a 
play — which is absurd. What the man in the pit 
regards as a problem play is a play that makes him 
think, which he justly regards as a phenomenon 
deserving of wonder. But every play makes a man 
think, if it goes deep enough into nature. Not 
necessarily at the time, for if it is a good play you 
must follow it to the end. But afterwards it does : 
and this means that the playwright sees deeper 
into character than the audience. He ought to : 
otherwise what business has he to come out in front 
of the curtain instead of cheering from the house? 
Now, Ibsen has succeeded in making more people 
think, or thereabouts, than most men of our time. 
In this play he makes you think of the way it hits 
a man and woman to lose an only child, more or 
less by their own fault. That is the problem, and 



"LITTLE EYOLF" III 

he works it out to his own satisfaction — maybe not 
to yours. 

That brings us on to the psychology of "Little 
Eyolf." Now the psychological play is just such 
a bloodless, 'Daily Telegraphic' apparition as the 
problem play. Psychology being in the popular 
language understood as the investigation of what 
goes on in the human mind, plays, being written in 
words, which are the expression of thoughts, must 
needs either be psychological or else a kind of 
things-in-themselves with no significations that 
may be apprehended of man. The only true distinc- 
tion is between good psychology and bad, between 
much psychology — which means much stripping 
naked of the human heart — and little. In "Little 
Eyolf" Ibsen's psychology is much and good. 
There could hardly be anything better than the first 
act, except the second. The first act states the 
case. Here is a mother and a father, both weak — 
the mother in intellect, the father in purpose and 
feeling. With both it is the weakness, the un- 
equipped incapacity for life, of the unbalanced 
mind. The mother, as it turns out, is the straighter, 
the more respectable, and the commoner type. Her 
small heart chocked up with an appetent love of 
Alfred Allmers has no room for anything else, 
and she has an explosive courage which lets her say 
so. Alfred would have the courage also, but he 
has not the self-knowledge. In width, not in depth, 
there is more of him to know ; he does not know it. 
He talks much of his life-work, which is always a 



112 THINGS SEEN 

bad sign in a man : he should be ready with it when 
anybody pays to see, but not too garrulous of it 
to himself. So the wretched Allmers at one minute 
feels himself capable of a batch of new life-works 
besides his book ; next moment he can on no terms 
have another life-work than Eyolf; and the next 
he is quite cheerfully prepared to bisect it and 
apportion the other half of it to Rita. Then the 
crash comes and the remorseless analysis begins. 
Ibsen digs up the soul by the roots to see how it 
grows. And if any stronger, truer, profounder 
picture was ever made of the bereavement of weak 
natures and incompetent parents — and they have 
many points of coincidence with the strong and 
able — the world seems somehow to have lost count 
of it. The inarticulate anguish, the compelled self- 
scourgings, the conscious cowardice, the impious, 
imperious call to fling out on the world all the petti- 
ness at command — it strikes deep down because 
it comes from deep down. Through this valley of 
humiliation the parents win to the tardy hour of 
self-collection, the gathering up of the fragments, 
and the wandering slow steps out of Paradise into 
the desolate beyond. There is a kind of transforma- 
tion of both at the end — though mark that it is in 
each case agreeable to character — and this can be 
taken as untrue to life. People don't change their 
whole being so, you can hear the critic say. They 
do not. Nothing transmutes a character, but every- 
thing changes it. That is what is meant by saying 
that Ibsen's plays wind up with a note of interroga- 



"LITTLE EYOLF" 1 13 

tion. Ibsen winds up with a question because he 
knows this. Every episode in a life ends so ; there 
is always the change, but experience only shall show 
how great a change; the full stop comes only with 
death. Nora banged the door, and doubtless she 
came back again within the month, only she did not 
come back the same Nora, and that change of 
Nora's is the nett result of "The Doll's House." 
So Allmers will almost certainly go up North to his 
favourite gushing-grounds again, only not alto- 
gether the same Allmers. And Rita will stay down 
at the villa and live a new life, yet still in great part 
the same Rita. 

This story of Alfred and Rita would have been 
better told in a novel. But it is a masterpiece none 
the less, and it is better to have it in a play than not 
to have it at all. 



ZOLA.i 

A great writer must elect to march along one 
of two roads. He may be for all time, or he may 
be for an age. This means that all later generations 
will read themselves into the first: in the second 
one will see itself complete. When he sits down 
to cast about for his subject-matter, he must de- 
cide between what is essential and elemental in life 
and what is accidental and of the moment. Of 
the two paths, Emile Zola's genius has impelled him 
unfalteringly along the second. He is of the last 
half of the nineteenth century ; if it can see nothing 
in him, then there is nothing to be seen. As a 
document, indeed, it is sure beyond all hesitation 
that he will survive for ever. So long as men care 
one tittle to know of the years that followed '70, 
they will find no more illuminating history of what 
was vital in them than *Les Rougon-Macquart.' 
But it is to us of his own time, if for any one, that 
Zola makes his appeal as an artist. If he has not 
called up this modern world plain and coherent 
before our eyes, it is impossible he can be more than 
a curious puzzle for our grandchildren. His men 
and women are our contemporaries, or they are 
nobody; his interests, his casts of thought and 
feeling, are ours or nothing. He has crystallised his 

^ National Observer, August 12, 1893. 
114 



ZOLA IIS 

day and ours, the Second Empire, material civilisa- 
tion, heredity and evolution and science, showing 
us ourselves and the world, raw material of our- 
selves, mirrored in every face of the crystal in turn. 
It is not worth while to-day to draw sword for 
the realistic method of fiction as Balzac stumbled 
on it and Flaubert exhibited it full-grown to the 
world. Its manifest and technical masterpiece can 
be had in Coventry Street for half-a-crown. Con- 
formably with the essence of art it is a symbolism 
— the exhibition of the vital facts of life in the 
details of every moment which they govern and 
infuse with colour and significance. Such a method 
needs no defence beyond the reminder that the 
picture depends for its pictorial quality upon the 
background as upon the figure : tliat but for the 
accidents of life out of which it fashions itself, life 
would not be at all. Zola took up realism frankly 
where Flaubert left it. As early as the second 
volume of his twenty, he began to use the host of 
attendant facts that formed his background as his 
atmosphere and his most irresistible engine of ex- 
pression. The exotics of the hothouse in 'La 
Curee,' the market-stalls in 'Le Ventre de Paris,' 
are not just heavy fragrance and prismatic colour : 
out of them there is struck the dominant note of the 
book. As the series went on, the mass of details 
accumulated till it became a gigantic mechanical 
difficulty to discipline them. But each time Zola 
triumphed as a craftsman. He is the Napoleon of 
fiction. He marshals his army of insubordinate de- 



Il6 THINGS SEEN 

tails so that each one contributes to the weight of 
the mass, then flings them upon you crushingly. 
Each unit tells, but each is kept rigidly proportioned 
to the rest and to the whole. There are thousands 
of soldiers, but they never cease to be an army. So 
he rises to the artistic miracle of 'La Debacle'' — 
infantry and cavalry and artillery, engineers and 
commissariat and ambulance ; the smell of the 
powder and the horses ; the swish of each 
footstep as Corporal Macquart and Private 
Levarseur drag themselves through the miry lanes 
of Champagne, the hunger shining from their eyes 
as they tighten their belts at the bivouac, the blood 
flaming through their veins in the last madness of 
Sedan. Yet all these things never blind Zola to the 
one great generalisation. War, seen steadily and 
whole. 

But to collect together a mob of facts is not real- 
ism, and he who can see no more than this in 'Les 
Rougon-Macquart' has almost a right to belong to 
a vigilance society, and assist at the prosecution of 
the next Vizetelly. Art must be governed by an 
idea, and the pleasure that the simple take to be the 
touchstone of artistic achievement is but the pleas- 
ure that must attend on any idea's comprehension. 
Now the novelists before Zola had taken for their 
dominant ideas some aspect of human character. 
Flaubert did so whenever he took any interest in his 
subject-matter at all. Balzac did so too : if he was 
led at times by the irresistible allurement of exist- 
ence as existence to turn aside and watch the mak- 



ZOLA 117 

ing of paper or the diligence service between Paris 
and the provinces, he was yet never his real self but 
when he was prying curiously into the most com- 
plex workings of the heart of man. In one blas- 
phemed word, the ideas before Zola were psycho- 
logical — the same ideas that, having run under 
when the naturalistic novel began to conquer the 
world, have sprung up again with Bourget. But to 
Zola the warmer and finer emotions of man call 
faintly. Beyond that most poignant tragedy of 
Silvere and Miette in his first volume, there is hard- 
ly a sign of it but the hard, if terribly convincing, 
power of 'La Conquete de Plassans,' and the half- 
loving, half-cold dissection of 'Une Page d'Amour' 
and 'Le Reve.' Again and again it has been re- 
peated, with more truth than understanding, that 
Zola creates no individuals. You might indeed say, 
on the other side, that literature has never created 
an individual; that to create a complete individu- 
ality you must weave together into your imperson- 
ation everything in the world that could be said 
about a man ; that to tell his name and his ancestry, 
as Zola does, to describe his person, to say how he 
eats his dinner or reads his newspaper, is really to 
give the world a greater working intimacy with him 
than the finest diagnosis of his emotion when he 
first called his loved one his. None the less it re- 
mains true that, compared with masters like Shake- 
speare or Turgenieff, Zola does not people his 
books with breathing men. The terrible Rougons 
and the abominable Macquarts are less than men, 



Il8 THINGS SEEN 

but in a manner they are also more. There are sides 
of their characters that he leaves unhandled. But 
where his ideas touch them, where men come into 
relation with the forces on which the mind of his 
age has been set — then he tells more of them than 
any man. He gets firmer foothold on to the solid 
rock of the ultimate. His generalisations spread 
themselves out more widely ; he sets men more 
manifestly in their true places among their fellows 
and in the total of all things. 

Man, then, is not his theme, but man in relation 
to the forces that fashion the world. To vary the 
phrase, he is the poet of these days of science as 
Darwin was their prophet — the poet of machinery 
and levelling analysis and all-governing law. His 
subject is some enormous idea, and his characters 
are the subject in action. Marthe Rougon and 
her imbecile Desiree, Maxime and his miserable 
Charles, are not men and women, but units of 
heredity. Eugene Rougon and his arid satellites 
are units of the Second Empire. There is no novel 
of all the twenty — if you set aside 'La Fortune des 
Rougon,' which just stops short of being two books, 
a preface and an idyll— that has not some huge 
abstraction for its subject. And, strangely, the one 
factor in Zola's universe which he fails most signally 
to embody artistically is just that heredity of which 
he started out to write the epic. To the poet hered- 
ity appears most importunately as unbreakable 
bands of necessity, hurrying its victim whither it will. 
But, though no man certainly has better realised 



ZOLA 119 

the tragedy of the inexorable constraint that presses 
in on man from every side, Zola has never worked 
out the possibilities of heredity. He paints it at 
his solemnest in the gathering of the five gener- 
ations in the madhouse of les Ttdettcs, but it is 
never even commensurate for impressiveness with 
Ibsen's appalling concentration of heredity on one 
point in 'Ghosts.' Indeed, heredity lags languidly 
through some half-dozen volumes and then disap- 
pears altogether but for the rarest and most 
perfunctory moments of self-assertion. With 'L'As- 
sommoir' Zola began to grapple with fresh impos- 
sibilities. The heroine of that book is not Gervaise 
nor drink, but the vie ouvriere. There are charac- 
ters for all the shades and gradations of it. In the 
thick of all goes Coupeau, haled along by the un- 
pitying impulse of environment, the type and muster 
of Aristotle's tragedy — the man neither good nor 
bad, tumbling by accident and error into the deepest 
pit. Having shaken the load of heredity from his 
back, Zola went on to other conceptions, which you 
may colour with the light of science or poetry as 
you will — prostitution in 'Nana,' a rotten hoiir- 
geoisie in 'Pot Bouille' (where the essential is the 
chorus of servants, the scum on the stewing corrup- 
tion of the demure house in the Rue de Choiseul), 
the new commerce in 'Au Bonheur des Dames,' the 
"black poetry of Schopenhauer" in 'La Joie de 
Vivre.' The conceptions expand, and the style is 
transformed with them. Beginning in the tight, 
costive manner of Flaubert, the 7not propre giving 



I20 THINGS SEEN 

its value to each sentence, he becomes broader and 
more fluent, at last quite melodramatic. In the 
end comes 'Le Docteur Pascal,' the hymn of life: 
the hymn that whispered through the rustling of 
the Paradou, half-sung in all the births, marriages, 
and deaths with which the toiler marked the mile- 
stones of his progress, the undertone in all the 
episodes of love and lust that give away half the 
virtue of convinced frankness in the vice of unper- 
spectived revolt. The long work ends fitly with the 
passionate dithyramb of life — the unconquerable 
resolution to exist that goes like the sun into sewers 
as into palaces, and is not defiled. 

In the process of these widening generalities he 
gradually shaped a structure for the novel quite 
distinctive and luminously illustrative of the side 
the world turns towards him. While he cast the 
skin of Flaubert's manner of writing, he developed 
a framework for each story almost as rigidly formal. 
Taking the material in which he chose to personify 
his ideas — say a coal-mine and colliers — his manner 
was to present a long procession of pictures of it. 
There are the pit and the pitmen at all times, day 
and night, summer and winter, in every phase of 
their characteristic life. Sometimes, in *Une Page 
d'Amour' or 'Au Bonheur des Dames,' the picture 
never changes its outlines. Impression succeeds 
elaborated impression, and the reading public cries 
out against the unmeaning, unending repetitions. 
But they are not repetitions. Each one of the great 
sales in 'Au Bonheur des Dames' marks the close 



ZOLA 121 

of a cycle of the history ; each cycle enfolds more 
than the last. Such samenesses, with the greater 
fulness to which they are the foil, mark the ever- 
recurrent pulses of life and civilisation, and each 
throbs with an intenser enthusiasm than the last. 
Sometimes — ^take 'Le Docteur Pascal' for an ex- 
ample — the same words ring again and again 
through the book like a refrain. As the passion of 
the poet grows hotter they too grow with a magnifi- 
cent expansion, until they burst the body in which 
for art's sake they are imprisoned, and pervade the 
universe in their native guise of universal truths. 
There is always the consciousness of abstract truth 
struggling to assert itself through every one of 
Zola's men and machines and institutions. It gives 
all his work a strange kind of perfection, not wholly 
artistic, but more like the perfection of a system 
whose fitted parts are all squared and jointed flaw- 
lessly. If the system is right, all is right. To come 
back to 'La Debacle,' what could be more triumph- 
antly relevant and triumphantly true than the figure 
of the peasant stohdly working his fields among the 
shells of Sedan? Without the idea it is melodrama 
— perverse and objectless melodrama. But the idea 
comes to rescue it — the idea of recuperation in the 
fact of destruction, the indomitable perpetuity of 
life, the implicit statement of the law that becomes 
outspoken with 'Le Docteur Pascal.' It is this 
symmetry and coherence — the constant sense of 
massive agencies working through all casual actions 
to which they lend purport and explanation — that 



122 THINGS SEEN 

gives us leave to call Zola the most ideal of the 
idealists. The real subject of the 'Rougon-Mac- 
quart' is eternal truth, its real hero indestructible 
force. 

It is the scientific spirit aflame with poetry. In 
place of the hopeless struggle to grapple with the 
monstrous tangle of interests that make up a man 
to-day, Zola puts the device of taking him by sec- 
tions at a time and referring him under each sec- 
tion to one of the primitive forces that struggle in 
the complexity of his nature. He seems to be sing- 
ing the war-song, not of man but of the impalpable 
agencies of philosophy. But to tell of philosophies 
and agencies is none the less to tell of man, whom 
they form. It is the passion of science, who for 
once has caught the look of her sister art. That 
is why Zola is for this one age of science — a won- 
derful sport in the line of artistic evolution. For 
if art could only once be science she would die 
happy. But she would die all the same. 



THE NEW TENNYSON.i 

("In Memoriam." By Alfred Tennyson. London: 
Moxon.) 

That a poet, when death has robbed him of his 
friend, should put his woe intO' threnody is in 
gracious accord with what the world takes to be 
the spirit of poetry. Poetry, we please ourselves to 
think, is the resultant of emotions too importunate 
not to chafe at the commonness of the common 
expression and burst through them into a form 
where words can pulse with the rhythmical throb 
of grief and joy. By the grave, if anywhere, poetry 
claims the right. Then, if ever, our ears are open 
to the poet. But what are we to say if he catches 
at the occasion of his bereavement to spin cobwebs 
of disquisition about himself and nothing else? Are 
we not right to complain that he abuses the privi- 
leges of his order? Surely. And we take "In 
Memoriam" to be such an abuse. In three years 
its author has written one hundred and thirty and 
odd poems about himself. He has, like other men, 
a right to talk about himself, to strip his soul naked 
in the eyes of mankind. But he has not a right to 
do so under the pretence of an elegy, and the pen- 

1 The state of the publishing trade is such that, for this week at least, 
we can give reviews of old boolts alone; done, it is right to say, in several 
styles, as though the themes were actual and the authors were of to-day. 
—Ed., 'National Obsbbveb,' August 26, 1893. 
123 



124 THINGS SEEN 

alty for his transgression is that his elegy rings 
hollow. We look first in such work for the energy 
of sorrow; instead of it we find this poet on the 
threshold obscurely quoting some classic, we know 
not whom, and wondering to himself how long his 
sorrow will endure and what will be its nett effect 
on his character. "I weep for Adonais," said Shelley 
in a like case. But our threnodist, having struck 
this false note at the outset, continues to blunder, 
and the chords of his lyre jar worse and worse as 
he goes on thrumming it. At the best of times Mr. 
Tennyson has but little fire of emotion to warm 
withal the delicate flavour of those things, old and 
new, that he serves up before us: he is the poet 
of afternoon tea drunk in blue teacups in an old 
garden. And here where we crave most urgently 
for a little genuine glow we get it least. We ask 
for sorrow; he gives us tortuous self-analysis and 
metaphysics. "In Memoriam" is, indeed, the tri- 
umph of self-consciousness. When before did gen- 
uine mourning drape itself in the stiff trappings of 
Horace, or spend hours on the laboured dissection 
and comparison and classification of the various 
kinds of distress into which finally he can twist him- 
self at will ? It is not so that real men mourn, nor 
so that they write elegies. Grief for the dead is 
very like a bodily wound. Now and then it can be 
handled freely, and the ecstasy breaks out; after- 
wards it stiffens, and to touch it hurts. The mem- 
ory of loss is pushed resolutely into the background 
of the heart ; it is for a long time too horrible, too 



THE NEW TENNYSON 125 

piercing an agony for recollection : one goes about 
in a fear almost physical of anything that might 
rip it open anew. Look at that, and then look at 
this dandy heartbreak of "In Memoriam," patting 
its lines into shape and tasting the flavour of its 
epithets' — evermore picking, picking, picking at the 
scar that never bleeds. How dear Mr. Tennyson's 
friend was to him we have neither the right nor 
the desire to inquire : it v/ould be a wanton, an in- 
solent cruelty to try to plumb the depth of his dis- 
tress. But since he has made it into a dirge, we 
•have the right to say, and we do say, that his dirge 
is a bad one. It may be great philosophy, it may be 
wonderful poetry, but it is most frigid elegy. Read 
Catullus, read Shelley, who was all things sooner 
than full-blooded, and you will see the difiference 
between straight and crooked, deep and shallow. 
In all these well-filled lines you shall not find one 
echo of that instinctive, animal cry of pain which 
levels all men in the face of those cruellest deaths 
that lop ofif a limb of the soul and leave the rest to 
live and wince. 

Mr. Tennyson chooses to make public all things 
about himself except the one passionate fact that 
could alone have started the work into life. He 
goes round and round it, with a hint here and an 
implication there that just serve to make the mix- 
ture tepid instead of cold. He sings, it may be, be- 
cause he must, but it is the must of the scribbler, 
and not of the full heart. It is so with the poems 
that would be personal ; it is so with those of wider 



126 THINGS SEEN 

application approaching issues momentous for the 
race. Nothing but an incurable itch of versifying 
could have kept him through all those years, dry- 
ing his tears, then blubbering out afresh, moaning 
out his timid doubts and fears and hopes, now an 
Atheist, now a Christian, now a Pantheist, — always 
anything for poetical copy, and at bottom always 
nothing at all. You long to take him by the shoul- 
ders and shake him heartily and quote King Claud- 
ius on unmanly grief. Where is the use, where is 
the dignity, of these perpetual unanswered ques- 
tions? Is my friend alive? he cries, and answers 
Yes and No in a breath. Shall I see him again ? Is 
it considered a mesalliance in heaven if he loves me 
yet? Now what is all that to him? In love, as in 
all things, it is more blessed to give than to receive. 
The reward of love is in the loving. And just so 
the reward of life is in the living. Why go strain- 
ing aching eyes towards the clouds when honest 
living lies in the path before him? What is there 
in this life that makes it nothing but the vestibule 
of the vacant future, to be hurried through with the 
one regret that it is not more quickly crossed? To 
vapour about the imperfection of this world and the 
tremulous hope of another — this is not the faith of 
which he is so enamoured. Faith is to set one's face 
steadfastly against all the ills of life; content to 
know what can be known, and outstare the brazen 
truth with the unconquerable resolution born of 
self-respect. Honest doubt can never creep into 
the philosophy of a brave man who can think 



THE NEW TENNYSON I27 

Straightforwardly. Only two attitudes befit him: 
investigation towards what is possible of discovery ; 
indifference to all else. Does his friend die? He 
faces out the truth : he is gone for this life, and it 
is hopeless work to guess about another. He reels 
and goes on, torn with the pain but never surren- 
dering his free soul to it by so much as one groan. 
This puny womanish complaint, that can neither 
weep hot tears nor keep dry eyes, might be set in 
the loveliest language of poetry, and that would 
avail nothing to save it. The curse of the sentiment 
must pervade the words. And so it is here. That 
there are exquisite passages of poetry we allow. It 
is unfortunate that they are there to veil its ugliness, 
but it is certain that there they are. As certain is 
it that the exquisiteness is all in the irrelevancies. 
That Mr. Tennyson can make graceful descriptions 
of scenery, that he is a master of literary allusion, 
that he writes music, that he constructs phrases that 
capture the fancy by an unerring combination of 
sound and colour and motion, — all this is known to 
all Englishmen. But here sickly thought has spread 
its contagion to words. Just as he circles round and 
round his despair and his belief, so in this poem he 
often writes round and round his meaning with 
never an attempt to get to the heart of it. He has 
invented here a new language, the language of the 
refined Sentimental Coward. He tumbles alter- 
nately into fine writing and obscurity. The vice of 
circumlocution is inevitable to the man who sets 
himself to pore over his friend's grave ; the vice of 



128 THINGS SEEN 

vagueness proceeds as inevitably from thus fum- 
bling with an idea that he cannot or dare not grip. 
So that there results a strange admixture of final 
and immortal phrasing with dark and mawkish af- 
fectation. And, because the affectation is the true 
vehicle of the poem, it is this that tastes in the 
mouth at the end. The metre, too, with its horror 
of the epigrammatic, is made to bleat in. With it 
all there are two lines that stick fast in the memory 
and sum up the whole. The voice is not the voice 
of grief; and the words are hard to understand. 
Also, they are not worth understanding. 



WORDS FOR MUSIC.i 

That the books of Wagner's operas are monuments 
of foolishness, all that are unfamiliar with the Mid- 
dle High German tongue will readily allow, and 
those that are not are unworthy of being taken into 
consideration. Yet it is so much less trouble to 
give a dog a bad name than to hang him, that our 
countrymen would often be at a loss to uphold this 
primary conviction by solid argument. So that the 
Englishman abroad in the Fatherland of the Leit- 
motiv might well be idler than in going to see and 
supply himself with a poser for the Wagnerian. 
There is not so much to do of an evening in 
Munich. The stranger may spend one evening 
drinking beer in the English Garden, and the next 
at the uncovered tables of the Miinchener Kind'l 
drinking beer; but in the end tedium will surely 
drive him into the Hoftheater. There, by good luck, 
he may chance upon that earliest work of the master 
that he called "The Fays." Of the music, indeed, 
he need take little note. It points back to Wagner's 
Kapellmeistership at Dresden, when the tradition 
of Weber still hung about the opera there. But 
Wagner might have slept all his days in sackcloth 
and ashes, instead of silken nightshirts, without be- 
ing granted that delicious magic of melody with 

^ National Observer, July 22, 1893. 
129 



I30 THINGS SEEN 

which Weber embroidered his tales of fairyland. 
The score of "The Fays" is all made up of com- 
monplace phrases, repeated meaninglessly to in- 
finity, of endless recitative with never a vitalising 
touch of drama, and among it all some faltering 
echoes of Weber coming to a timely end by quick 
and welcome suffocation. But the book is a dream 
and a wonder beyond the imagination of man. Seen 
and heard by the untutored Englishman, this is the 
impression of it. 

You begin with some evolutions of what the play- 
bill calls the Wifely-Ballet-Personal : after which 
the story unfolds itself. Once on a time a certain 
prince strayed in an unguarded moment to Fairy- 
land, became naturalised there, married a consort 
and had two children. But by the beginning of the 
tale he had grown cold to the embraces of his con- 
sort (she is never called wife) and deaf to the prattle 
of his children. His affections were set passion- 
ately on one thing only in all the world, and that 
was going to sleep. He would go to sleep all about 
the stage, on no occasion, for whole scenes at a 
time. One day he happened to be sleeping "around" 
in a wild and rocky country, when a large crowd 
of men with alpenstocks swarmed in over the cliffs 
and began singing a chorus so loudly that the 
prince awoke. At first he seemed to take them for 
the pilgrims in "Tannhauser," but they quickly as- 
sured him that they were hunters, that they came 
from his native land, that his father was dead, and 
that he must go back and be king. He received 



WORDS ^FpR MUSIC 13^ 

the news with emotion, shook hands somewhat per- 
functorily all round, and promised to speak to his 
consort on the matter. With a view to this, he 
walked very quickly up and down the stage for 
several minutes singing "Where art thou ? Where 
art thou?" but finding his efforts unavailing to 
fetch her, lay down and went to sleep. As he 
would not go to his consort's palace, his consort's 
palace, reversing the action of Mahomet's moun- 
tain, came to him. The rocks opened and it ap- 
peared in all its gorgeousness. The portent did not, 
of course, awake him, but his consort did, and re- 
ceived the news of his impending departure with 
indignation. None the less, he went. Whereupon 
his consort, who was a woman of determination, 
ordered in a large ornamental swing-boat, got into 
it with two friends, and was hoisted up into the fiies : 
so that she was presently seen no more. 

The curtain next rises on his native city, which 
is just being assaulted by the enemy. His high- 
spirited sister is promenading the battlements in 
a decolletee suit of armour. The king arrives, and 
great joy is felt. But joy is changed to consterna- 
tion when his consort strides on to the stage from 
behind a convenient bastion. To mark her sense 
of his desertion, she suddenly produces the two 
children from somewhere (they could not possibly 
have been concealed in the swing-boat), breaks off 
some yards of battlement, changes all the back 
scene into a lurid wall of fire, and flings the children 
over into the flames. To the father, inefiicient at 



132 THINGS SEEN 

the best of times, this came as a heavy blow: he 
fell at her feet in speechless horror and submission. 
So she opened a postern gate in the city wall, and 
there they were, as lively as ever (which was not 
much to say), toddling on to the stage again. At 
this point the excitement of the chorus became so 
intense that it went out for a minute or two and 
defeated the enemy. When it returned it found the 
king still grovelling at his consort's feet. To show 
him what he had lost in deserting Fairyland, she 
was still doing wonderful tricks with the scenery. 
After which she and her two attendant fays disap- 
peared contemptuously down a trap-door, and the 
king, tired out by such trivialities, went to sleep 
just where he was. He had not slept a wink for 
nearly three-quarters of an hour. 

He must have slept for some time, since by the 
beginning of the next act his sister was queen, and 
had bestowed her hand upon the tallest of the 
chorus. Suddenly he came round a corner into 
the palace and saw the royal procession pass by. 
For a moment he was thunderstruck ; but seeing 
the necessity for cool and wary action, he pulled 
himself together and went to sleep on the steps of 
the throne. They were covered with a very cheap 
linoleum, but anything was good enough for him 
to sleep on. Suddenly the two attendant fays de- 
scended in the very same yellow swing-boat; they 
woke him up and called his attention to a magic 
harp and sword and shield beside the throne, which 
he had not previously observed. He showed no 



WORDS FOR MUSIC 133 

resentment at being awakened, and the three went 
out together. The next scene lay in Hell, where a 
furious rout of the Beasts of the Apocalypse was 
howling and dancing uncouth steps. To these there 
entered the king and the fays through the rocky 
wall. Hardly had he time to ask, "Do you know if 
my consort is here?" ere they were upon him all. 
But he behaved with unusual spirit, and drew his 
sword ; the monsters maintained the unequal fight 
for a few bars, until one of them got pricked with 
the brand, on which they were dispirited and went 
away. Then the scene changed to another room 
in the same, where a squad of recruits was being 
drilled. The king and fays appeared as usual and 
asked the usual question ; the squad formed a Mace- 
donian phalanx and advanced upon him. He re- 
treated till he could retreat no farther ; then it oc- 
curred to him once more to draw the sword, on 
which the squad departed. Thereon he threw away 
the sword and began to play the harp. The expe- 
dient, imprudent as it might seem, was attended 
with unexpected success ; for the rocky walls of 
Hell opened, and there stood his consort, smiHng 
forgiveness. And behold! he fell at her feet as 
of custom. 

Meanwhile, the walls opened wider and wider, 
disclosing the King of the Fays, surrounded by the 
Wifely-Ballet-Personal. He made a long speech, 
concluding with the blessed assurance that the 
earthly king might have his consort and be a fay — 
the one pursuit in life for which he was thoroughly 



134 THINGS SEEN 

fitted. Then a strange thing happened. It became 
plain that the King of the Fays was sitting on the 
top of a gigantic epergne, and the lower bases sud- 
denly began to rise out of the stage. It went up 
and up, and on each branch sat one of the Wifely- 
Ballet-Personal. Last of all came a sort of triptych, 
with a long, long fay in the middle, and the two 
children, one on each side. It was an expansive 
moment. The father embraced them, and almost 
slept for joy. Everyone else embraced everybody, 
saving only those on the epergne, who would have 
fallen ofif if they had. And the curtain fell on the 
touching scene and an audience greasy with tender 
satisfaction. 



THE FUTILE DON.i 

He squares his elbows at high-table to the most 
marvellous of entrees; he rolls his eyes in common- 
room as he gulps the most precious of ports. And 
the entrees twist him with indigestion ; the wine 
laps him in drowsiness. He crouches over his 
fender in May and catches cold. He guts Momm- 
sen's 'Staatsrecht' for his lectures, and cannot de- 
cipher his notes. He reads Tennyson, and forgets 
him in the very crisis of quotation. He talks of 
this and that, but pre-eminently of this. He walks 
round Godstow or Trumpington, panting and 
snatching short steps like a girl. He kneels down 
in chapel, covering his face with his hands to shut 
out the undergraduates, and prays God to be de- 
livered from all heresy and schism. You would 
docket him as the pattern of important futility. 
And all the while he is dead. 

Quite dead, and there are hundreds of him buried 
in Oxford and Cambridge, round chapels. His col- 
leges are castles of somnolence, palisaded off from 
all the world of men and things. Pass through the 
heavy gate in front, across the dead silence of the 
court, along the dark passage, up the dusty, winding 
stairs, and you have yet two stout doors to batter 
in before you can win to the carpeted, pictured cell 

' National Observer. May 20, 1893. 
135 



136 THINGS SEEN 

where he has dug his grave. Slumbering there, he 
forgets the green earth, or he never knew it; he 
takes count no longer of time or of his own self. He 
might doze inside that sepulchre for years, and 
every one beyond the college walls be none the 
wiser nor the sadder. This he has sometimes been 
known to do; more often he ambles round and 
round his world of shades, from chapel to lecture- 
room, from hall to common-room, and so to bed. 
Rarely there passes over his coffin a gust from the 
roaring world that stirs him to a moment of gal- 
vanic life. Some bruit of impending dislocation in 
the British Empire has ere now dragged him out 
into the light to nod away an hour on the platform 
of the Guildhall or the Corn Exchange. But, for 
the most part, he is too thickly incrusted with forms 
and traditions and antiquities to take note of reali- 
ties. Like the Glaucus of his own Plato, he is so 
rankly overgrown with shells and tangle that none 
on earth can recognise him for the man he was. 

For he was once a man, nor different from other 
men. He was not of necessity the schoolboy whom 
masters wonder at because he knows more than 
they, and fags laugh at because they know much 
more than he. Nor was he always the pale and 
studious undergraduate, not reading but only sluic- 
ing in facts in the vain hope of watering his parched 
soul. Not but he who would become a Don must 
sit close and read the summer through, and in these 
modern times must add some gloss of thought to 
his reading. But when he is first admitted into 



THE FUTILE DON 137 

the convent he may still flatter himself that he is a 
man. That is only the beginning. For in the scale 
of creation the Don ranlrs between the man and 
the parson, and the living part of him must be petri- 
fied ere he be worthy to fold his legs under the ma- 
hogany of the common room. The process of 
incrustation begins with the formula which binds 
him to guard and revere the statutes of his college. 
For a moment he triumphs; he has entered into 
the palace of learning, and strains his eyes to take 
in every detail of its gorgeousness. Then the forms 
and traditions and antiquities grip him, they spread 
their arms about him : and he stiffens with self- 
satisfaction into his stalactitic tomb. Contact with 
the youth he is to educate is the finish of it. Not a 
word, not a deed, may issue from him that might 
cause any of those little ones to offend. Beginning 
by sacrificing his body to what he holds to be his 
mind, he cannot but end by sacrificing his mind 
to what others take for his morals. 

Among the inexorable forces that close round 
him and stifle his vital part, none is more potent 
than his fellows. The Eternal-Donly acts and 
reacts. Set a Don, even a Don of long standing, 
down in London or Paris alone, and he might yet 
attain again to humanity. It is the conventicle 
of Dons that fosters the academic death and lays 
its cold hand on every new-comer. Go into a 
college in Oxford or Cambridge, and you will see 
men who have known each other and disliked 
each other since they were twenty — some since 



138 THINGS SEEN 

they were ten. Each knows the other's weaknesses 
well enough to detest them, but not well enough 
to despise them. Oxford and Cambridge are ruled 
by the dread of the Sneer. Every one knows 
your foibles, and he has known them so long that 
he only waits a chance to make a by-word of them. 
So the ambition of the Don is wholly fulfilled when 
he can sit in his carved oak stall in chapel and 
thank God he is as other Dons are. They are 
all cut to a dead level. In Cambridge you are 
despised if you know anything, in Oxford if you 
do not know everything. In Oxford you must 
smile on your bitterest enemy as he insults you; 
in Cambridge you must turn your back at table 
on your friend when he begins his most amusing 
story. To write anything more than a school-book 
is ruin, for it is to be sent naked to the Sneer 
omnipotent. For he that finds some other outlet 
for himself except the mere being a Don is assur- 
edly fair game for the clumsiest. So conversation, 
emasculated already by the fear of the under- 
graduate, rises to the sublime inanity of an old- 
maids' tea-party : one learned man of sixty leaning 
over the table to another, and saying, "Do you 
know — it has just occurred to me — there are four 
past or present Queen's men all sitting together 
at high-table ?" 

The Don recognizes the existence of women only 
when he marries them. This privilege was an in- 
novation, and the genuine Don marks his sense 
of that degradation of learning by being very rude 



THE FUTILE DON 139 

to the daughters of his married colleague. Those 
daughters spend their early years in wondering 
what song the sirens sung; till at thirty-five they 
drown their sorrows in the violin. The young 
Don is much put about when he takes one of these 
foreign devils down to dinner. One who had 
blushed and stuttered more even than usual (in 
common-room he was made a mark of for doing 
something more than usual) was found behind a 
curtain, laughing fit to die that he should be set 
to talk with so strange a monster. But it must 
be said in his defence that the Don often looks 
on the man of the world with a very good-humoured 
tolerance. There is always the charitable possibil- 
ity that if he had been entombed for thirty years 
inside a college he might have made a very donly 
Don after all. But that is no excuse for the 
Don who tries to be a man of the world : for he 
is only saved by the fact that he never by any devil- 
ishness succeeds. 



AT TWENTY-FOUR. 1 

He who stops to take account of his journey 
through hfe must needs suppose to himself that 
he stands on an eminence. He can trace the path 
by which he has come, and through the tangle ahead 
fancy will ever thread him a descent not wholly hard 
or hazardous. With twenty-four, or with seventy, 
it is as with thirty. Halt anywhere to look back or 
forwards, and the vistas of recollection will conspire 
with the haze of forecast, till you will tell yourself 
past and future lie mapped at your feet. Still, at 
what point you will, the illusion must be similar. 
That is inexorable necessity ; weakness dwells in 
halting at all. Unprofitable curiosity for the past 
is the complement of weak-kneed irresolution for 
the future. Seventy, or thirty, or twenty-four, the 
same unwholesomeness marks the state when this 
timorous circumspection takes hold of a man. I, 
that am twenty-four, know myself for a coward in 
this, as certainly as I perceive and would pillory the 
cowardice of thirty. I know it, and am ashamed. 
But while my cowardice is the same, my excuse 
is by far the greater. For I see — wherein I dis- 
play myself hardy and unashamed on my mountain 
of cloudS' — that I am come to the end of the best 
stretch of my life, and stand at the outset of the 

^ National Observer, January 6, 1894. 
140 



AT TWENTY-FOUR 14I 

very worst. Till to-day I was a mere irresponsible 
offshoot from human society. From to-day I am 
a young man officially, so to put it, and in dreary 
earnest. I am come into rank with the world — 
in the rear rank, maybe, but with the untiring ne- 
cessity of marching forward and keeping step. Till 
now I sauntered pleasantly on the skirts of the 
army, went back and forward arm-in-arm with my 
fancy, and snapped my fingers at the solemn pha- 
lanx of serious men. From now the world will 
regard me, too, seriously, and, for a humiliation 
ten thousand times more abject, I must so regard 
myself. 

From now I must learn and adjust, correct and 
systematise. Before I was a fool, confessed and 
chartered; but the folly of the fool has at least 
a laughing ease with it, where the folly of the 
wise man is as ridiculous and stif^y unconscious 
to boot. When I was not on terms with the 
working world, I could claim from it neither com- 
fort, nor honour, nor respect, nor even so much as 
acquaintance. But what was that to me? What 
if one of the serried regiments jostled me, so long 
as I could jostle any and all of them at will? 
Were they magnificently unconscious of my being? 
That was the very thing I coveted from them most 
of all. Yet, in truth, I coveted nothing of them, 
and as little of myself. Passion might clash with 
reason ; physical soundness might break itself on 
will; what was that to me? I was sucked dry, 
like an orange, by one woman's kiss. I lost the 



142 THINGS SEEN 

friend of all my years for a laugh ; I flung away 
the holiest of sanctions for a dram. But what of 
that? I was no master of my passions, but no 
slave either : I was their brother, of one heart and 
mind with them. We blew in companionship where 
we Hsted. If I did not appear vulg-arly debauched, 
I was not the less drunk with a dizzy revel of im- 
morality. There stood no law, no obligation, out- 
side or in. But if duty was trampled under foot, 
there rose up in its place the god of a most high 
and passionate pride. As the world vanished into 
the background, I stood out the more, clear cut, 
triumphing. For myself there was no rule; for 
my dealings with the world pride dictated the condi- 
tions. Nothing unworthy of the absolute worship 
in which I held myself, nothing untrue, untrust- 
worthy, insincere, disloyal was good enough for 
such a libertine anarch as I was. That was the one 
regulator, and it was enough. I was uncurbed, 
happy, justified of my being. The pedantry of 
nascent generalisation I had outlived ; the pedantry 
of moral valetudinarianism was yet to come. And 
so I drank draughts out of the spring of life, and 
knew not what I did. I spread and strengthened 
every way without plan, and pursued the true life of 
man without the labour and the degradation of test- 
ing its truth. 

But on pride follows Nemesis. As the one moral 
idea, the overmastering I, waxed and exalted, reflec- 
tion and calculation grew up like mildew all about 
it. Since I was I, and so all-important, the cursed 



AT TWENTY-FOUR 143 

years broug-ht in the slow persuasion that I must 
be economised.' There was a resistless call to make 
the most of this unique treasure. And so I drifted 
on to the threshold of analysis and regulation, of 
system and moderation, and all the ossified pru- 
dences of Thirty. And yet it is not the system I 
contemn, but the systematising. If a man could 
but run under ground at twenty-four and come 
up again at fifty! Then he would see his spirit- 
ual experience, his hoard of things done and left 
undone, complete around him. To extend here, 
to dock there, would be the matter of but one syn- 
optic moment. But the tentative culture of the 
soul, the faltering experiment, the shocked recoil, 
the cold calculating pusillanimity of middle age, — 
there is the abject anticipation for the next years. 
Already Thirty knocks at my heart and rattles in 
my chest. And in the wider sphere the pitiless 
web of relations is wrapping me noiselessly in. 
I know well in what form it will come. Have I 
not once already been vanquished ? Tense for con- 
quest, I held the white girl limp in my arms but 
a day or two ago ; like a fool I deluded myself into 
sparing her helplessness. What was that but the 
first treason, the first step on to the decline? It is 
no reverence for the laws, so I apologised then to 
myself; but here there are particular respects. Re- 
member place and time. It is no duty, but a grace. 
But next time it will be more a duty ; soon a duty 
outright. Taking cowardice yesterday for soft- 



144 THINGS SEEN 

heartedness, I shall end at thirty by believing it 
virtue. 

So stand I on the chill brink of young senility, 
and shiver to the irrevocable plunge. 



A FABLE OF JOURNALISTS, i 

Now as I went I came on a monstrous wood, that 
grew round the skirts of a high mountain. Out 
of its terraces of rolling green the peak shot up 
clear into the sunlight, mottled with pastures and 
vineyards, and veined with shining streams that 
twinkled down it. And there beaconed from the 
very top a light most dazzling in its whiteness ; 
but what it was, and whence it came, I could not 
see for the brightness of it. Being come nearer, 
I was aware of a hoarse roar, as if a great crowd of 
men and women were fighting among themselves 
for dear life, and all the while cursing and praying, 
shouting and groaning and shrieking. And pres- 
ently, coming yet nearer, and the noise getting ever 
louder and more urgent, so that now and again 
some voice or another broke away from the mass 
and floated distinct to the ear, my eyes lit on a 
great marvel. I saw that the wood was fenced all 
about with a tall and sturdy hedge, thickset with 
most poignant thorns of the length of a man's 
finger. At the entry of the wood, along all the 
sweep of the bank as far as I could see on either 
hand, there in very deed was a mad tangle of men 
and women, all struggling together and surging 
furiously up against the hedge. Those that were 

^ The National Observer, June 24, 1893. 
145 



146 THINGS SEEN 

first would be stabbed by the thorns and shudder 
back, screaming and whimpering; but they would 
be cast aside by those behind, or else caught in the 
eddy of the mob and flung on to the pricks again. 
There were folk, too, on the far side of the 
hedge, but not many; and it was plain to see that 
each man of those without recked of nothing else 
but to be first within the pale. So they were all rush- 
ing forward together, hurling themselves into the 
mass to part it and to make a way, trampling on 
such as had fallen until the blood spurted up into 
their faces. And they clawed at the throats of those 
before and beside them, to pull them down and 
pass over their bodies, and leaped madly on to be 
gored by the spikes, both men and women implor- 
ing those within to help them through the hedge. 
And the air was rent with oaths and entreaties, and 
screams of rage and anguish, and the most hideous 
din conceivable. But when it so happened that 
one burst through, he would stand an instant in 
the gap and fight the others back : longer he needed 
not, for the thorn-branches never broke, but bent 
and then swung back tougher and pricklier than 
ever. 

When I saw these things I stood a space stock- 
still with the horror of it. Then coming again to my- 
self, and running up to an old man who was sitting 
by the roadside a little way from the crowd, "What, 
in God's name," I cried, "are these lunatics doing?" 
He, mopping the blood from a rent in his neck, 
answered : "This is the Forest of Scribes, wherein 



A FABLE OF JOURNALISTS 147 

are the things that the heart of man most desires — 
drink and gold. And the peak above it is the Mount 
of Letters, to which the way lies up through the 
wood. There is, indeed, another road on the other 
side, but in that part the steep is guarded by a 
deep and rushing river, and the ferrymen exact a 
great price. I, too, was hot to win to the Mount, 
as all these are, and, being poor, I have been striv- 
ing at the barrier these many years; but I came 
by a hurt on the spikes." None the less, he sprang 
up as he spoke and went at the hedge again like one 
demented. Therewith, myself catching the frenzy, 
and thinking that there must surely be some rare 
thing to be had on the Mount since so many were 
gone mad about it, I sprang after him into the 
medley. Twice in that sweating hell I went near 
to be crushed to death, and once I felt the thorns. 
But, as it fell out, I saw by me a young man who 
had just made a gap in the quick-set, and behind 
him, without more ado, I slipped in; for he, as it 
seemed, was going in, like myself, not for the gold 
or drink, nor yet to get up to the Mount of Letters, 
since he could easily have paid the toll on the other 
side, but only for a fancy he had to see the wood. 
Therefore he held me the boughs apart for a mo- 
ment. But the branches whipped to again behind, 
and I heard one howling piteously on the thorns. 

So I came into the Forest of Scribes. And at 
what I saw there I was yet more astonished than 
at what passed outside. For the trees grew so clus- 
tered together that their branches were all tangled 



148 THINGS SEEN 

and knotted and enmeshed, and the heavy leaves 
choked what sunbeams might try to struggle in. 
So that thick blackness fell about me like a cloak, 
and for a while I could see nothing, but stumbled 
on blindly over the matted roots. It was darker 
than any night, and there were no paths, nor was 
there any light to trace them by if there had been. 
Now that wood is so huge and mazy that, once 
inside, a man might almost be dead and buried 
for any chance there is that he can find his way 
out again. It is full of dingles and gullies, so that 
it is impossible to go through by following the 
trend of the ground. And in every corner, though 
I could not see, I heard men and women, the 
strangest medley — high and low, rich and poor, 
young and old, dull and ingenious — none could tell 
how many, nor what they did, nor whither they 
were going, nor why. I heard voices of folk run- 
ning up and down belated, some calling out to know- 
whereabouts was the Mount of Letters, where the 
sunlight was ; and all the time prating of something 
else — laws and trading and mummery and chiffons 
and all the silly and outlandish things in the world. 
But the wonder of wonders was to perceive how 
the very men that at the hedge had been so furi- 
ously enamoured of the Mount of Letters, when they 
got in, began to falter. And the cause of it was this. 
First, the horrid gloom and confusion, no man 
knowing whether or no his face were set toward 
the Mount. Second, as my eyes drank in the dark, 
and were able to peer a little ahead, I saw that the 



A FABLE OF JOURNALISTS 149 

gold of which the old man had spoken was hidden 
underground. Every man was bound to dig up his 
tale of pieces, else he was swiftly conveyed away 
out of the wood by sideways that there were into 
a pit where he presently perished. So the scribes 
were all scooping up the mire with fouled fingers, 
some reluctant, some greedy. Also, there was the 
drink that lay all about in pools : I could see from 
the shimmer of it in the dusk that it was stagnant 
and noisome. Whoever drank of it forgot little by 
little all that he had set his heart on before, and 
was content to lie down and gulp and gulp it till 
he ceased even to grub for gold, and was borne 
away in the end to the pit. These three things there 
were that seduced such as would climb the Peak 
(for there were some there that cared nothing for 
it, and only went in for the gold), and in the end 
it transfigured them out of all knowledge. They 
grew hideous to look on : their eyes were bleared, 
so that they would have been dazed and pricked 
by the Light of the Mount even had they come 
thither, and they tottered for weakness. One by 
one the seekers left groping in the dizzy wood 
and came to rejoice and hug themselves in the 
filthiness of the gold and the stench of the pools. 
Some there were that lay down less from love of 
it than for weariness and mere heartlessness. These 
made bitter complaint of their ill-luck, since they 
were still hungry for the Light. One of them, 
who was no more than a young boy, I heard crying 
aloud: "Curses on this beastly Forest of Scribes 



ISO THINGS SEEN 

and the gold and the drink, and curses before all 
on my own misery and folly that ever thought to 
gain the Mount thereby;" and therewith he smote 
himself on the breast two or three times, and fell 
to drinking again. Though for the most part they 
cursed not themselves, but only the labyrinth. Some 
few had attained to the Mount more by happiness 
than deserving (said they), but I saw none. For 
the rest, there they were and there they miserably 
remained, hating the muck and putridity, but never 
able to get quit of it, feebleness and blindness ever 
creeping faster on them, knowing not in what part 
of the wood they were, nor whether they were jour- 
neying back or forward, nor yet anything else but 
that they were undone for ever, and that through 
their own unwisdom. 

But why they so longed to scale the Mount of 
Letters, and whether or not, wood or no wood, 
they could ever have come up to it, and what was 
the bright light I saw atop of it, though I inquired 
of many, there was no man of them all could 
tell me. 



THE DREYFUS CASE. 



SCENES AND ACTORS IN THE TRIAL/ 

"Your name?" asked the president of the court- 
martial. 

"Alfred Dreyfus." 

"Profession?" 

"Captain of artillery." 

"Age?" 

"Thirty-nine years." 

With these three common phrases he broke the 
silence of four and a half years. Nothing could be 
more formal, and yet here, in the first five minutes 
of the trial, was summed up the most incredibly 
romantic history ever recorded. Alfred Dreyfus — 
five years ago scarcely anybody knew there was 
such a name as Dreyfus in the world ; now the 
leading comic singer of Paris, who was born with 
it, has had to change it because it is too embarrass- 
ingly famous ! Captain of artillery — and generals 
who have led armies in the presence of the enemy 
have lost their commands because of him ! Thirty- 
nine years — and here were men who were known 
before he was born staking their ripe reputations 
for or against him ! The only living ex-chief of the 

^ M'Clure's Magazine, October 1899. 
151 



152 THINGS SEEN 

state in which he was a simple unit ; five successive 
heads, and nine generals besides, of the army in 
which he was an unregarded subordinate ; the min- 
ister who for years has conducted foreign rela- 
tions in which he could never have dreamed of figur- 
ing, — all were there because he was. Novelists like 
Prevost and Mirbeau, poets like Maurice Barres, 
philosophers like Max Nordau, French journalists 
like Arthur Meyer and Cornely, foreign journalists 
whose names are familiar as far away as Helsingfors 
and San Francisco, — they had all come to see him. 
There were men like Picquart and Lebrun-Renault, 
nobodies when last he saw them, now famous by 
reason of an accidental connection with him. Most 
dramatic of all, there was a little, close-veiled 
woman in black — Madame Henry, a woman he had 
never seen, widow of a man whom he never knew, 
yet who had risen to celebrity and fallen to an in- 
famous death because of him. 

What did he think of such a miracle? To all 
appearances he did not think of it at all : he was 
concentrating all the energies of a mind starved for 
five years on the answers he would presently make 
to the charges against him. Perhaps that was as 
well for him. For had he thought a moment, he 
would have seen that he, the most famous man in 
the world, was at the same time the most insignifi- 
cant person in the court. He supposed they were 
there to try him ; they were not. To him it was 
everything whether he left his prison a free man or 
a doubly damned convict for the Devil's Island; 



THE DREYFUS CASE i53 

it was nothing to them. He was simply something 
for them to fight over— a Homeric carcass round 
which had ralhed heroes and demi-gods to hack 
and stab at each other. On one side were the army, 
the church, the aristocracy ; on the other the civil 
law, the anti-military proletariat, Protestantism, 
and the Jews. The prize of the struggle was not 
Alfred Dreyfus, Captain of artillery, but France. 

To the English eye it all looked like what it was 
—a public meeting rather than a court of law. 
An English court is almost ostentatiously grim and 
business-like. The room is small and none too 
hght ; the walls bare, unless a plan should be hung 
on them to illustrate an argument. The judge sits 
on the bench— a nose, mouth, and chin appearing 
out of his white wig— like a silent sphinx. Lawyers 
drone and mumble. Witnesses stumble over mono- 
syllables. The impression is one of hush and dim- 
ness—man suppressed, but the awful majesty of the 
law brooding over all. But this court-martial in the 
Hall of the Lycee was utterly different. The room 
was large enough for a lecture or orchestral con- 
cert, which is exactly what it is used for. With 
two rows of large windows at each side — square 
in the lower tier, circular in the uppei^— it was al- 
most as light as the day outside. The walls were 
coloured a cheerful buff; round the cornice were 
emblazoned the names of Chateaubriand, Lamen- 
nais, Renan, and the intellectuals of Brittany. At 
the top of the room was a stage; hanging on its 
back wall the white Christ on a black cross pro- 



154 THINGS SEEN 

claimed the place a court of justice — only instead of 
the solemn sphinx in black, there sat at a table seven 
officers in full uniform. In the centre was the 
president, Colonel Jouaust, a little old gentleman 
with dark hair, eye-glasses, and a huge white mous- 
tache that seemed part of the same stuff as the tall 
white aigrette in his kepi on the table before him. 
On each side sat three officers — four small and two 
heavy men, in the black, red-faced uniform of the 
artillery; their kepis also — tricolor for the senior 
officers, red for the junior — edged the judicial table 
with a line of colour. Behind, there sat some other 
officers, the supplementary judges. On a small 
tribune to the left of the stage sat three more, the 
prosecuting commissary of the government and 
two officers of the court. Opposite, on our right, 
was a similar tribune, but a new costume — four men 
in black gowns with one flap and one streamer 
edged with white fur, white muslin bands round 
the neck, and a high black cap like a priest's biretta. 
These were Dreyfus's two counsel and their assist- 
ants. Below them on a chair sat Dreyfus himself, 
an officer of gendarmes at short arm's length be- 
hind him. Right in front of the president was a 
chair for the witnesses. These and the reporters 
thronged the forward part of the hall — generals 
with crimson, gold-brimmed kepis, and with rib- 
bons and stars on their breasts; civilians in black 
and brown and grey, tall hats, stifif hats, soft felt 
hats elaborately arranged into the shape of a hay- 
cock, pince-nez with broad black ribbons, drooping 



THE DREYFUS CASE 155 

green silk neckcloths with fringes — in a word, 
French dress. In the middle of it shone the silks 
and feathers of the reporters of the 'Fronde,' the 
woman's paper of Paris, which does not employ 
a single man. Sprinkled everywhere were the blue 
and white uniforms of gendarmes with sword and 
revolver; along the back of the hall twinkled the 
red and blue and steel of an infantry force with 
fixed bayonets. You might have taken it for a 
political meeting, or an assault at arms, or a fancy 
ball — or anything except a trial. 

The witnesses assisted the impression. Each was 
brought in by a door beside the stage, came before 
the president, and raised his hand to the crucifix as 
he swore to tell the truth, all the truth. The presi- 
dent asks him what he knows of the afifair. And 
then — and then he embarks in a pretentious speech, 
written out in whole or part beforehand. Some- 
times it is interspersed with original documents, 
which are handed up to be read by the registrar of 
the court. For the manner of the speeches, the 
politicians stand upright, declaiming, waving their 
hands at the president, as if they were asking the 
suffrages of their fellow-citizens : the soldiers usu- 
ally sit and murmur confidences into the Colonel's 
ear. But for the matter, it is always the same — 
the speaker's self. Dreyfus's case is mentioned, no 
doubt, but merely as a thread to hang together the 
witness's first impressions of the case ; what he did 
to correct or confirm them ; what view he takes of 
the importance of this document or the interpreta- 



156 THINGS SEEN 

tion of that; what view he took of the international 
situation in 1894, and what measures then suggested 
themselves to his mind ; what he said to General A., 
and what Major B. told himi that Captain C. had 
said to Lieutenant D. "This is at fourth hand, it is 
true," he will ingenuously add; "still it should be 
allowed its relative value." Hours are spent in 
repeating at second and third hand the evidence 
of witnesses who in a day or two are to be heard 
themselves. It seems no part of the president's 
business to guide the inquiry: if he wishes for in- 
formation on any point, he must wait half a day, 
till the witness has exhausted the subject of his 
past life and opinions. Cross-examination fails to 
drag the case out of the rut, for the moment the 
lawyer asks a question — prefixing, of course, a brief 
speech of his own — the witness is ofif again, to the 
same tune, like a re-wound musical box. While he 
is speaking, the cross-examiner is composing his 
next oration ; during that, the witness is composing 
his ; and so on for days. 

Here is an example of French methods of taking 
evidence. The officer who was with Dreyfus on the 
day of his degradation. Captain Lebrun-Renault, 
has asserted that the condemned man made a con- 
fession. A confession, of course, is evidence every- 
where. But everybody knows that false confes- 
sions of crime are not rare ; therefore, in English 
law, even a confession requires confirmation. In 
this case the confession is disputed. Captain Le- 
brun-Renault wrote in his diary that Dreyfus said, 



THE DREYFUS CASE 157 

"The Minister knows well that, if I gave up docu- 
ments, they w^ere worthless, and that it was to get 
more important ones for them." On another occa- 
sion he said "had given up," instead of "gave up." 
Dreyfus, interrogated on the Devil's Island by the 
President of the Court of Appeal of Cayenne, said 
that he said, "The Minister knows well that I am 
innocent. He sent du Paty de Clam to ask me if 
I had not given up some important documents to 
get others in exchange for them." It is not pre- 
tended that anybody else heard what Dreyfus said. 
Yet almost every witness has discussed this alleged 
confession. First, the president questioned Dreyfus 
himself on it. Dreyfus denied it. Next, M. Casimir- 
Perier deposed that Captain Lebrun-Renault had 
said nothing about the matter to him. Next, Gen- 
eral Mercier deposed that he told Captain Lebrun- 
Renault to tell M. Casimir-Perier about it. Next, 
these two witnesses were heard in "confrontation," 
as they call it — that is, standing up side by side and 
contradicting each other's statements. The ex-Min- 
ister of War said that General Gonse heard him 
tell the Captain to tell the President ; the ex-Presi- 
dent said that M. Dupuy had told him that Captain 
Lebrun-Renault did not tell him (Dupuy) that he 
told him (Casimir-Perier). M. Cavaignac went into 
the same incident at great length. He said that 
General Gonse wrote to him that Captain Lebrun- 
Renault told him (Gonse) that he (Lebrun-Renault) 
heard Dreyfus confess. This jungle of pronouns 
is what the French seem to call evidence. And 



IS8 THINGS SEEN 

when you have struggled through it, you hear that 
Captain Lebrun-Renault is to be called himself to 
give his own evidence in Dreyfus's presence and to 
be cross-examined upon it. What a trial ! 

It is incredible, but it is absolutely true, that the 
first four days of the public trial yielded not one rag 
of first-hand evidence, either for Dreyfus or against 
him. In that time eleven witnesses testified, — one 
ex-President, four ex-Ministers of War, three other 
ex-ministers, a diplomatist, a miscellaneous general, 
and the widow of Henry, the forger, — and all testi- 
fied simply about themselves. What they said we 
will leave to French history to tell ; this is an article 
on the Dreyfus case. 

Upon the foreign mind, accustomed, if not pro- 
fessionally to weigh evidence, at least to procedure 
where evidence consists of statements of fact, the 
gloom fell deeper and deeper hour by hour and day 
by day. We came with curiosity aflame; we were 
not merely to see a great show, but to solve a great 
mystery. Day passed day, general came after gen- 
eral and discoursed for hours ; the mystery only 
grew denser. The first witnesses of any moment — 
for M. Casimir-Perier came to Rennes not to say 
what he knew of the case, but to complain that 
he, then President, knew nothing — were a proces- 
sion of French war ministers. Only two of them 
had anything to say. General Mercier and M. Cav- 
aignac. Nothing could be more utterly different 
than the manner and methods of the two ; yet both 
created an identical effect — mystification. M. Cav- 



THE DREYFUS CASE 159 

aignac was all open and above-board. He is the 
good boy of French politics — a toy Brutus who has 
lived on his reputation for integrity ever since at 
school he refused to take his prize from the son of 
the Emperor who imprisoned his father. This pro- 
fession of honest man leads to high eminence in 
France — the more so in that Cavaignac has a mon- 
opoly of it. He is the housemaid who sweeps up 
all the scandals of France, When every public 
man but half a dozen had dirtied his fingers in 
Panama, Cavaignac was the man to restore public 
confidence in public honesty. When Billot had suc- 
ceeded Mercier, and the Dreyfus case had become 
worse tangled than ever, and the General Stafif and 
the War OfKce were suspect, who but Cavaignac 
could go to the Ministry of War and vouch for 
them? To the outsider he is a tiresome prig, with 
his eternal protestations of Roman virtue ; and 
he looks it, with his narrow, stooping chest, his 
narrow pedant's head, his little moustache, and the 
close-cropped, smug side-whiskers on his cheek 
bones. But to France it is an obvious godsend to 
have one public man who can be relied upon to tell 
the truth. Cavaignac duly went to the Ministry 
of War and announced that Dreyfus was guilty. 
Cavaignac said so ; France was reassured at once. 
Presently Cavaignac got up in the Chamber and 
read a letter from one foreign military attache to 
another, proving that Dreyfus was a traitor. France 
had it posted up on the walls of every commune 
in the country. And then one day it was known 



l6o THINGS SEEN 

that the letter was a forgery, and that its author, 
the chief stand-by of the General Staff in its fight 
against Dreyfus, was in prison with his throat cut. 
And the mystery was that Cavaignac still said Drey- 
fus was guilty. The discovery of Henry's forgery, 
whereof he himself extorted confession and instantly 
acknowledged it, was the strongest confirmation of 
his famous integrity. But this time France doubted. 
His heart remained unimpeachable — only what 
about his head ? 

Now came Cavaignac into court at Rennes to set 
all doubt to rest. He stood up before the council of 
war, stretched forth his hand, and harangued it as 
if it had been the Chamber of Deputies. Frankly 
and clearly he told them everything he knew — and 
it proved that he knew nothing. Not one single 
revelation to satisfy the world of Dreyfus's guilt — 
only an argument such as any man who knew a 
little of the French army could have made quite 
as well! It was a good argument, clear, cogent, 
everything except convincing; and to the impartial 
mind it disposed for ever of the superstition that a 
man cannot honestly believe Dreyfus guilty. Cav- 
aignac proved that Dreyfus was in an exceptionally 
good position to know all the secrets detailed in 
the intercepted letter which forms the basis of the 
charge. Very few ofKicers in the French army are 
able to betray the information that was betrayed; 
none was more able than Dreyfus. To be evidence 
to hang a man and worse, this demonstration, to 
Anglo-Saxon ideas, should have gone further and 



THE DREYFUS CASE l6l 

shown that none other was able to betray these se- 
crets at all. It estabHshes Cavaignac's good faith, 
and makes it easy to believe in other men's : it 
explains maybe why Dreyfus was accused and con- 
demned. But it does not clear the mists from 
the most extraordinary afifair that ever perplexed the 
w^orld. 

Mercier's evidence explained nothing; but Mer- 
cier's personality suggested whole volumes. He 
said no more than Cavaignac, and said it a great 
deal less clearly; but the very obscurity hinted at 
possibilities immeasurable. It was characteristic of 
the man that his deposition dealt largely with the 
cryptic methods of the bureau of espionage, and it 
was itself so cryptic that we knew no more of them 
after he had discoursed for an hour than when he 
began. Mercier's personality strikes the note of the 
whole case. Looking at his back as he gave evi- 
dence — tall, straight, and slim — you would have 
called him soldierly and suspected him stupid. But 
his face and head are a nightmare of the Inquisi- 
tion. On his face the brownish skin hangs loosely. 
There is neither depth of cranium nor height of 
forehead to hold a brain in. The eyes are slits with 
heavy curtains of lids, and bags beneath them that 
turn the drooping cheeks into caverns. A little 
moustache and beard frame thin lips that might be 
evil, sensual, humorous, but could never be human. 
If you look at his head, you call him a vulture ; at 
his face, you call him a mummy. He speaks in 
a slow, passionless monotone; his gestures seem 



l62 THINGS SEEN 

calculated to follow his words, instead of proceed- 
ing, as a Frenchman should, along with them, on 
the same impulse. When he stood up side by side 
with Casimir-Perier, he persisted in his assertions 
with the dogged mumble of a schoolboy detected in 
a lie. When he sat and strove to wind the toils 
of treason round the prisoner, he seemed as un- 
moved by hate as by pity; he accused him dully, 
as if repeating a lesson. Cold, deliberate, tortuous, 
thorough, yet ineffective; verbose, but not candid; 
bravely barking with native stupidity ; conscien~ 
tiously believing himself to be doing God's work; 
untouched by hate or love, anger or fear or hope, 
for others or for himself — General Mercier was the 
very type and mirror of a Jesuit grand inquisitor. 

Mercier was the spirit of darkness ; but there was 
also a spirit of light. Nearest to the audience of the 
four robed figures on the counsel's bench was a 
young man of great stature and size. As he sat 
loosely on his chair, hitched his gown up on to his 
shoulders, leaned forward to listen or heaved him- 
self back to loll, every motion had a vast sweep, 
embodied easy power. When he stood, he was a 
clear head above most Frenchmen in court. His 
keen eye looked out from under bushy brows as a 
gun looks out of its port. A light-brown beard, 
neither very trim nor shapeless, and light-brown 
hair just beginning to nod over his brow, tempered 
brute strength with a look of bluff kindliness. If 
Mercier was an inquisitor, this sunny-faced giant 
was a viking. It was Labori, the great cross-ex- 



THE DREYFUS CASE 163 

aminer. Since he defended Zola he has given him- 
self heart and soul to the cause of Dreyfus. Per- 
haps his skill in eliciting reluctant truths was piqued 
at the persistence of a mystery unfathomed ; cer- 
tainly his fighting spirit was roused by contumely 
to resolute hostility. When first he rose to cross- 
examine, his voice was agreeable, yet seemed too 
soft and liquid for the man. But the moment he 
approached a point, a distinction, an admission, it 
hardened and rang like steel. In anger you knew 
he could roar out of that great chest like a bull. If 
any champion could plunge into the black shades, 
choke lies and errors and ignorance, and pluck out 
the truth, it was surely Labori. 

Therefore, this being the most tangled riddle of 
the century, a French journalist galloped into court 
at half-past six on the third morning with the 
screech, "Labori is shot!" And Labori was lying 
on the canal bank with his head in his wife's lap 
and a bullet in his back. He had been shot from 
behind; letters, including a threatening missive 
received the day before, had been taken from his 
pocket; it was said that a man had tried to wrest 
from him the portfolio that held his notes for the 
imminent cross-examination of Mercier. Certain it 
was that the assailant got away and remained un- 
caught for days ; which, as he must want food and 
the whole countryside knew of him, spelt sympathy 
and friends. Plot or no plot, Rennes went mad. 
Jews wept. Newspaper-sellers volleyed "Long live 
the army !" or "Down with the tonsure !" and hun- 



l64 THINGS SEEN 

dreds came out into the street to watch them do it. 
At every street comer somebody was calling some- 
body on the other side an assassin. When we re- 
turned from court that morning, Jewish ladies were 
waiting at the doors of the hotel to make sure that 
no one had assassinated their husbands. They told 
each other with shaking lips that the lower quarters, 
inflamed by cider far weaker than St. Louis beer, 
were contemplating a massacre of Jews. They re- 
membered, and went pale, that it was less than a 
week to the St. Bartholomew. An eminent novelist 
went up to an eminent anti-Semite and remarked, 
"Assassin ! Your face displeases me. Assassin ! I 
give you five minutes to leave this hotel. Assassin !" 
The anti-Semite, who happens to be a Jew, went to 
the prefect and asked for protection. 

"Perfectly," replied the high-minded official, "it 
is my duty to protect every law-abiding citizen, irre- 
spective of party, race, sex, or creed. I shall do my 
duty." The anti-Semite Jew breathed more easily. 
"But," added M. le Prefect, "it would be wrong 
to disguise from you that my authority stops at 
the door of your hotel. By the way," he went on 
pleasantly, "when do you count to leave Rennes?" 

"To-morrow." 

"Well, then, let me advise you, as a man of well- 
known law-abiding tendencies, and considering the 
emotion aroused by the odious attempted assassina- 
tion of this morning, to — to — advance the time of 
your departure by a day." And he did. The nov- 
elist, a much bigger man, accompanied him to the 



THE DREYFUS CASE 165 

door, shouting "Assassin!" and Rennes saw that 
defender of the honour of the army no more. 

The only Frenchman who remained indubitably 
sane was Labori himself. But bravely as he bore it, 
the loss of the five hours he had promised himself 
with General Mercier, and of the distinction he had 
hoped to win in the greatest case of the century, 
must have been a bitter disappointment. And to the 
seeker after truth the loss was almost as irreparable. 
Without Labori the case was dull, and grew daily 
duller. The day of the shooting brought a pro- 
cession of generals — ruddy, tubby generals of comic 
opera ; clean-limbed, elastic-bodied, clear-eyed gen- 
erals of the manoeuvre field ; bald, white-headed 
generals like elders in somebody else's crimson 
trousers; Jesuitical generals, winding coil on coil 
of cold insinuation around the pale, silent prisoner. 
Day after day, day after day, and Dreyfus was help- 
less and the accusers uncontradicted. It was not 
evidence, it was not first-hand, it was not new. But 
the judges, with this perpetual stream of accusation 
washing over them, for the most part from their 
own superior officers, must needs be carried away 
by it in the end. They were plainly earnest, con- 
scientious, impartial ; took notes, asked questions, 
listened with fixity ; were worthy of the momentous 
part fate had assigned to them in their country's 
history. But from day to day accusation and innu- 
endo trickled over, and Dreyfus's face went whiter 
and whiter and his chances blacker and blacker. 

To the unprejudiced truth-seeker these days 



i66 THINGS SEEN 

brought a feeling of absolute, dazed bewilderment. 
The hope of certainty receded further and further 
into the shades ; and with the absence of any pal- 
pable facts, the sense of mystery grew till it became 
an oppression. There must surely be something 
behind all this. Here was the great case which for 
five years had convulsed France and perplexed the 
world. In its ultimate effects it will probably alter 
the face of Europe. Some have called it the be- 
ginning of the end of civilisation. And then there 
seemed to be nothing at all behind it. Everybody 
had promised the whole truth for this final clearing 
of the matter, and yet nothing came. Nothing 
known — and still it was impossible to believe that 
there was nothing to know. Everything seemed 
possible ; every wild hypothesis progressed, in turn, 
from possibility to probability. One hour there had 
been a great plot and a ring of traitors in the army. 
Dreyfus was in it, and had been sacrificed to save 
the others. The next, ambitious Dreyfus had really, 
as he was said to have acknowledged, given up 
trumpery documents in the hope, Jew-like, of mak- 
ing a personal success by bringing to the Intelli- 
gence Department some great secret of Germany. 
Presently Esterhazy was telling the truth : he had 
written the letter to Schwartzkoppen which never 
went, so as to implicate Dreyfus, innocent or guilty. 
Anon Dreyfus had been shunned and tabooed by 
his brother officers, and had rushed to his revenge 
in treason. 
Hour by hour, accusation on accusation, Dreyfus 



THE DREYFUS CASE 167 

whiter and whiter, his chances blacker and blacker ! 
And then one morning, when the military clericalists 
seemed to have their hands on the prize, came a man 
who restored the balance of the fight. Colonel 
Picqtiart slouched into court in a shocking bad 
morning coat and ill-fitting trousers, lifted his hand 
to the Christ and swore to tell the truth, sat down 
in the witnesses' chair, got up, and sat down more 
comfortably, settled his shoulders to the back of it, 
crossed his legs, poured himself a glass of water, 
took hold of the table before him with both hands, 
and began. 

Until he ran his head upon the Dreyfus case, 
three years ago, Picquart was almost the most 
promising soldier in France. Like most of France's 
best men, he is an Alsatian. He had been fighting 
in Algeria and Tongking, and had spent most of the 
rest of his service on the General Staff. On these 
two roads to distinction he had gone so far that he 
was major at thirty-two and lieutenant-colonel at 
forty. He speaks and writes English, German, 
Russian, Spanish, and Italian, — an accomplishment 
almost unearthly in a Frenchman. He enjoyed the 
highest esteem of his chiefs. There was nothing in 
the French army to which he could not legitimately 
aspire, till he ruined himself by taking up the cause 
of Dreyfus. He has spent ten out of the last thir- 
teen months in a secret prison. His enemies have 
never suggested that he had any other motive than 
a predilection for justice and truth. 

He sat down deliberately as one v/ho means to 



l68 THINGS SEEN 

stay, and began. From the first word his voice was 
audible to everybody in court. His calm, reason- 
able-looking face was not stirred by any kind of 
emotion. He articulated with clearness, spoke with 
emphasis, with pauses for his audience to digest 
him, with pauses to prepare them for an important 
point, Vw'ith utter lucidity and fastidious exactness 
of phrase. It was easy to see that he had been a 
professor at the French West Point. Frankly, he 
was there to tell them what they did not know, 
and he no more expected it to be questioned than 
the schoolmaster expects the child to dispute the 
multiplication table. The judges hated it. Even if 
he had not gone against the army, he was younger 
than any of them, yet senior in rank to six out of 
the seven. He was a stafY man, what they call in 
the English army a "brass hat," and therefore not 
beloved by less lucky regimental officers. You 
could see their hostility : they looked at each other 
— looked away — leaned back — yawned. Picquart 
went on in his absolutely clear voice, with his abso- 
lutely clear exposition of facts. This was not evi- 
dence either; it was a speech for the defence this 
time, but a masterly one. It was obvious in five 
minutes that he knew the whole case from A to Z. 
He knew the work of the General Stafif as he knew 
the alphabet. He knew where every document 
was kept, where everybody worked, what his work 
was, what he was in a position to know and what 
he was not. He saw the nature and bearing of 
every fact by the dry white light of pure reason. 



THE DREYFUS CASE 169 

This was a man in some sort like Mercier — a man 
for whom hate or love, anger or hope or fear, could 
never colour what seemed true and right — only this 
was a man with a brain. His brain was like a 
swift, v^'ell-oiled machine, every wheel running easily 
in its place, every nut and bolt doing its due share 
of work, no less and no more. The judges ceased 
to look about, they looked at Picquart ; in the last 
hour of the five and a half hours' sitting they leaned 
forward motionless. In two hours Picquart had 
swept away over three days of the other side, and 
the case was back on the level again. 

And what of Dreyfus all this while? If the 
chances of the fight excite the man who merely 
wishes to know, what of him to whom, little as the 
fighters may care about him, it spells a new life or 
the old hell? To look at Dreyfus as he usually is, 
you would say he was the only quite disinterested 
spectator in the court. To hear him speak, as he 
rarely does, you would say he was the only man in 
the case who had the clear head to appreciate the 
evidence at its just value. Whatever he is or has 
been, Dreyfus is no common man. 

The first day, he came into court like a dead man 
just beginning to come to life. He walked like an 
automaton. His hair was grey; his face was like 
clay ; his eyes were invisible behind his glasses. 
His voice, when he spoke, was withered and sapless. 
He was a translation into awful fact of the metaphor 
"living death." But during his interrogation that 
very day his voice came back — harsh, abrupt, gusty, 



170 THINGS SEEN 

but sonorous and vibrating. His denials followed 
charges with the instant rebound of a sharp volley 
at tennis. He was stiff, certainly, and formal — it 
was well said that he looked more like a German 
officer than a French — and he denied everything 
with emphasis, but without emotion. The French, 
of course, found him unsympathetic, and certainly 
he looked stubborn and none too cordial or genial. 
When we saw him again, after four days' secret 
session, he had thawed amazingly; he was almost 
back to normal life. He moved with signs of 
elasticity, leaped to his feet, and spoke promptly, 
in a full voice. When it was his cue to be still, 
he sat with his knees together like an Egyptian 
statue. But when the long series of accusations 
came lapping over him, intangible, impossible to 
deny, much less disprove, with Labori gone and his 
other counsel ponderous, then we saw Dreyfus 
slowly freeze back to death again. That head that 
always thrusts itself into the middle of every photo- 
graph and insists on striking the note of every 
glance of the man — the deep, rounded, close-cropped 
cranium and the harsh, strong, hatchet profile, 
looked like a death's-head. It had a queer, archaic, 
oriental suggestion; it might have been a skull 
from Chaldsea, endowed by wizardry with a mo- 
ment's life and slowly fading back into grinning 
bones again. At all times, indignant or patient, 
hopeful or stony, it is the face of a strong man, both 
powerful to think and brave to suffer; but it is a 
face that you can never describe. It is sheer suffer- 



THE DREYFUS CASE 171 

ing as it can hardly have ever been seen — suffering 
both objective and subjective, agony felt and agony 
borne. There is only one such face, because there 
is only one France, and France has but one Devil's 
Island. 

As the days wore on, especially when the trial 
passed into a stratum of smaller witnesses, who 
made definite statements instead of harangues for 
prosecution and defence, there gradually appeared 
a new Dreyfus. He became a man. When he 
stood, he stood poker-backed as ever ; but he walked 
every day into court as if he were going to his office. 
His voice was still harsh, but it was measured. In- 
stead of protesting, protesting, half like a wounded 
beast and half like a machine, he began to argue — 
to give reasons why he did this or could not have 
done that. From a man trying to fight his way 
back to life he had become a man balancing prob- 
abilities. His demeanour, his voice, his thought, 
while always dignified, were daily more even, bet- 
ter oiled, so to speak ; more on the level of the rest 
of us, who have never died and come to life again. 

But the real Dreyfus — the unique Dreyfus of the 
Devil's Island — the petrified soul in the rigid body 
— that is the wonderful, awful thing that none who 
saw and heard will ever forget and none will ever 
see and hear again. For such, Dreyfus will ring 
through their heads till they die in one cry. It was 
at the end of the second public audience. General 
Mercier, cold, hard, passionless, had been accusing 
him of treason for three hours — accusing him as 



172 THINGS SEEN 

though the accused were either not there or, seeing 
he was there, were a clod of clay. At length he 
turned, and looked Dreyfus in the face. He said in 
that measured, pitiless monotone, "If — I — had — the 
— least — doubt — that — Dreyfus — was — guilty — I — 
should — be — the — first — to — say" (oh, why in 
mercy could he not hurry and get it done?) "I — was 

— honestly — mistaken " 

Ah ! A yell that seemed to rip the sleepy hall in 
twain ! Dreyfus was up, eyes blazing, head thrust 
fiercely forward, fist flung out. "You should say 
that," were the words; but they tore out so 
furiously that they were less like words than an 
inarticulate scream of supreme agony. For a mo- 
ment he stood thus, eyes and head and fist, with 
the officer's pitying hand on his arm. It was a tiger 
checked in his spring — only a human tiger, which 
is as capable of rage and so much more capable of 
sufifering. And the tone ! It is useless to wrestle 
with description : it was the whole story of the man 
of the Devil's Island. Everybody in the hall sat 
stupid and confounded, as though a bolt had fallen 
from heaven. Everybody felt shy and ashamed in 
presence of something so incomparably more in- 
tense than they had ever known. It was rage, and 
it was hope — ^just a tiny dash of hope to embitter 
the flavour of utter despair. It was passion that a 
man who always lived among men could never feel, 
and that passion was trying to burst out all in a 
phrase and did not know the way. The torment of 
a dead soul, knowing itself dead, in one anguished 



THE DREYFUS CASE 173 

Strain to break through into Hfe again — all that was 
in four words of Dreyfus. It told his whole history : 
there is no other man on earth that could have 
uttered it. 

II. 

THE EFFECT ON FRANCE.^ 

Out-of-doors, under the baking sun of August, lie 
the somnolent streets of Rennes. The tall yellow- 
plastered houses, all with their yellow-painted blinds 
hermetically shut, are faultlessly clean. You could 
eat off. the square cobbles of the streets. But Rennes 
is clean because it is asleep, and never wakes enough 
to smirch itself with the avocations of modern life. 
You look down the long vista of a speckless street, 
and it is empty. Perhaps one, two, at most half-a- 
dozen, heavy-booted Breton men or women clack 
over the ringing pavements. The bile-green river 
through the town might be Lethe. The shops doze ; 
the market square snores : you wonder how the 
place exists. 

The mind could imagine no completer contrast. 
Within, the court is all passion ; without, the town 
is all lethargy. Inside the Lycee is being played 
the last act of the drama that has convulsed France 
and staggered the world. Outside it, touching it, 
France is utterly unaware of it. 

Eight hours after the court has adjourned for the 
day, the good people of Rennes, appearing at their 
doors in shirt sleeves, can with difficulty be per- 
^ Harper's Magazine, October 1899. 



174 THINGS SEEN 

suaded that the report of the sitting is already 
in the evening paper. At length persuaded, they 
deliberate thoroughly over ways and means before 
they decide to buy. At last decided, they read with 
effort, wonder who are Mercier and Picquart that 
they talk so much about, and come to no con- 
clusion. 

On the walls moulder posters — appeals to friends 
of liberty, to law-abiding Catholics, to haters of 
Jews ; but Rennes passes them without lifting the 
eyes. Meetings are held to denounce Galliffet, to 
denounce the army, to denounce the Church, the 
Jews — anything ; a score of young hooligans smoke 
dirty tobacco, yell when it seems expected of them, 
go out and do nothing. The more electric Dreyfus, 
the less conductive is Rennes. The most explosive 
trial of the century is packed in impenetrable sand- 
bags of apathy. All of which things, you would 
naturally suppose, make a parable. It is of a piece 
with the irony of the whole affair that the return of 
Dreyfus to France, which ought to have been a 
match to set faction detonating, seemed instead the 
signal for a sudden, immense, and mostly holy calm. 

It is easy to draw inferences from that. It goes 
to show that the whole affair, the whole importance 
and notoriety of Dreyfus, was accidental and 
artificial. As soon as he left the Devil's Island 
he almost ceased to agitate France. Indeed, when, 
in 1895, M. Dupuy and General Mercier took the 
trouble to pass a special law to relegate Dreyfus 
to the Devil's Island, they did the worst day's work 



THE DREYFUS CASE 175 

of their lives. Had he been sent in the natural 
course to New Caledonia, it is possible that he 
might be there still, forgotten. "Possible," I say, 
because he is a Jew, and Jews do not readily forget 
or cast off their own people ; had he been a Gentile, 
he had almost certainly been forgotten in New 
Caledonia. But the chance of combining ferocity 
with theatrical display was too much for a French 
ministry. 

The public degradation of Dreyfus, with its 
blended accompaniments of imposing ceremonial 
and heartrending torture, was, after all, not too 
severe for the crime of which all Frenchmen then 
honestly believed him guilty. But the added 
cruelty of making a special law for him, sending 
him to a special place of banishment, tormenting 
him with every special penalty or deprivation that 
could make life a hell — that recoiled on its authors. 
The stage-management was too good, the situation 
was too dramatic, to be forgotten. Dreyfus on his 
own island — the very name of the Devil's Island 
was a melodarma in itself — sitting in the sun within 
his palisade, in irons, asking his guards for news, 
and met always with dead silence, informed — as we 
' now know — that his wife had borne a child two 
'^ years after he last saw her; who could ever get the 
picture of such a purgatory out of his head ? Under 
the last blow a Frenchman would have killed him- 
self ; but- the Alsatian Jew was made of stiffer fibre. 
He lived on, and his countrymen, with the spec- 
tacle of that awful agony ever before their eyes, first 



176 THINGS SEEN 

exulted, then came to doubt, insisted, disputed, re- 
viled, lied, forged, fought, forgot friendship, kin- 
ship, party, religion, country — everything except 
the silent man in irons under the sun of the Devil's" 
Island. 

But when he was brought back — when he was 
once more Alfred Dreyfus, Captain of artillery, in 
the cell of the military prison at Rennes, charged 
with having communicated to a foreign power 
documents concerning the national defence, tried 
on that charge before a court-martial of his peers — 
then France was no longer haunted by him. The 
avenging ghost was laid. Calm overspread the 
land. Many men had openly declared that Dreyfus 
ran an excellent chance of being shot between his 
point of debarkation and the prison of Rennes ; he 
was not even hissed. There has not been a single 
demonstration outside his prison worthy of ten 
lines in a newspaper. And — lest you should put 
down that fact to the congenital torpor of Rennes — 
in the excitable south, in the great military centres, 
in the manufacturing centres, in volcanic Paris 
itself, Dreyfus has not been the occasion of a single 
disturbance of any significance since he was landed 
in France. 

Language remains violent enough and vile 
enough, it is true : such a furious habit of black- 
guarding opponents as has grown up with the 
Dreyfus case in France could hardly be stilled in a 
day. But everybody has felt more at ease. The 
politicians and journalists have enjoyed the affair, 



THE DREYFUS CASE \^^ 

no doubt, but even in Paris man cannot live on re- 
nown alone. From them, and still more from the 
half-indifferent, wholly perplexed mass of the peo- 
ple, went up a great "Ouf !" of relief. Now at last, 
said they, we shall have the truth, we shall have 
finality in this wretched affair; thereafter we shall 
have peace. 

It might re-enforce that hope to consider how 
wholly irrelevant to all great material issues the 
Dreyfus case has been. At the first glance it seems 
that France has chosen to lose her head over a 
matter which she might just as well have let alone, 
which is over now, and has left her where she was 
before. Whether Dreyfus or Esterhazy betrayed 
documents, or both, or neither, it is certain that 
no other French officer will be tempted to do the 
same for years enough to come. Even if wrong 
has been done — if the innocent has been punished 
and the guilty has gone free, after all, it is only 
one man. And it is expedient that one man should 
suffer for the whole people. 

So argued, and would argue again, more than 
half of France. And just because they argue thus, 
they are utterly and fatally wrong. It may be ex- 
pedient to sacrifice one man for a country — when 
the detection of sacrifice and of expediency is left to 
others. But when the country argues thus itself, 
when it sacrifices the innocent one with its eyes 
open, then the sacrifice is not expedient, but ruin- 
ous. It is this truth that Colonel Picquart saw and 



178 THINGS SEEN 

proclaimed three years ago. When Dreyfus was 
first condemned it is probable that everybody con- 
cerned — even Colonel du Paty de Clam, who 
examined him, and General Mercier, who procured 
his conviction by communicating to his judges 
secret documents behind his back- — honestly be- 
lieved him guilty. But in 1896 Picquart found rea- 
son to think that the treachery for which he was 
condemned had been committed by Esterhazy. 

On this he wrote as follows to General Gonse: 
"The moment is at hand when those who are con- 
vinced that a mistake has been made with regard 
to them will make a desperate effort to have it 
rectified. ... I think I have taken all the steps 
necessary for the initiative to come from ourselves. 
If we lose too much time the initiative will be taken 
by outsiders, and that, apart from higher considera- 
tions, will put us in an odious light. ... It will 
be a troublesome crisis, useless, and one which 
we can avoid by doing justice in time." Up to that 
moment one man had suffered for the people, they 
not knowing it, and it was not altogether expedient. 
But from the moment the people knew and still let 
him suffer — from that moment began the convul- 
sion, the dissensions, the moral putrefaction, and all 
the rest of the discovered distempers of France, 

It was known in widening circles, first to a few 
soldiers, then to journalists and politicians, then to 
everybody who cared to be convinced, then — after 
the detection of Henry's forgeries — to everybody 
with ears to hear, that Dreyfus, if not innocent, had 



THE DREYFUS CASE 179 

not yet been proved guilty. In the face of that 
knowledge France still howled, "Let him suffer!" 
It is — to Anglo-Saxon eyes, at least — at once the 
grimmest and grotesquest spectacle in history — a 
whole nation, knowing that justice has not been 
done, keenly excited about the question, and yet not 
caring a sou whether justice is done or not. What 
matter, cried France, whether he is justly con- 
demned or not? Shoot him rather than discredit 
the army. There is no doubt that the judgment of 
the Court of Cassation .was received with disap- 
pointment, not to say fury, by the majority of the 
French people. And even of the minority — of the 
Dreyfusards who clamoured for revision — who shall 
say how few cared for doing justice to a man who 
might be innocent, and how many gave tongue 
merely because they hated the army, or the Roman 
Church, or Christianity, or France herself? All 
but the whole nation — the nation which professes 
itself the most civilised in the world — publicly pro- 
claimed that it cared nothing for the first essential 
of civic morality. Partly the petulance of a spirited 
child which will not see the patent truth, partly the 
illogical logic of French intelligence which will 
commit any insanity that is recommended in the 
form of a syllogism, partly the sheer indifference of 
a brute that knows neither right nor wrong. 

But why try to analyse a phenomenon so despic- 
able? One thing is certain, common justice is the 
first and most indispensable condition of a free 



l8o THINGS SEEN 

country's existence. It is absurd to think that any 
cause which has led to so deliberate a jettison of 
justice from the national cargo can be irrelevant — 
can be anything but most portentous and most 
disastrous to^ the nation. 

From henceforth every reflecting Frenchman 
knows that he may be accused of any crime, con- 
demned on evidence he has never heard of, ban- 
ished, tormented in body and mind, and that 
hardly a soul among his countrymen will care 
whether he is getting justice or injustice. They 
happened to take sides about Dreyfus ; he may have 
noi such luck. Dreyfus, for the rights of whose 
case friends and foes cared nothing, happened to be 
a convenient stick for anti-Semites and anti-mili- 
tarists to thump the other side with ; he may not. 
Reasoning thus, will the reflective Frenchman cul- 
tivate independence of thought, civic courage, 
political honesty? Not he. He will make it his 
business in life to cultivate a safe obscurity, and 
shout, if shout he must, always with the largest 
crowd. 

The results of such a lesson upon the public life of 
a nation are not easy to detect at once and in glar- 
ing cases ; but you may be very sure they are there, 
and in the long-run they will show themselves. 
The French citizen was fearful of unpopularity be- 
fore ; he will not be bolder now. The punishment 
of the eminent biologist Grimaux, who lost his pro- 
fessorship because he gave evidence for Zola, will 
not be lost on him. The timidity of a Casimir- 



THE DREYFUS CASE l8l 

Perier, a Mercier, a Gonse, a Delagorgue — of the 
President of the RepubHc, the Minister of War, the 
sub-chief of the General Staff, the judge who tried 
Zola — who all suspected the truth and dared not 
discover it, will be emulated by lesser men. 
Cowardice will become a principle of public life. 

In one respect alone can France claim pity — that 
she became bankrupt in justice through honouring 
too large a draft of her darling child, the army. 
The army is the adored of France. A few of the 
younger men, still smarting from the petty brutali- 
ties of sergeants who delight to bully boys of a 
better class than their own, hate it bitterly ; but to 
France as a whole her army is her dearest treasure. 
In a conscriptive country the sight of troops in the 
street is as familiar as that of policemen on Broad- 
way. In Germany or Austria a regiment will 
march past with drum and colours and hardly a 
head turns to follow it. But in France the passage 
of the regiment empties every shop, and leaves the 
whole street tingling with pride and enthusiasm 
and love. It does not diminish this affection that 
the last time the army took the field it was beaten 
and crumpled up, shot down by battahons, and car- 
ried into captivity by brigades. Quite the reverse. 
France feels a sort of yearning to comfort her army 
as a mother might comfort an unsuccessful son. 
And the hope of revenge for that humihation, in 
which she has Hved for near a generation, rests in 
the army alone. The army — as they have said so 
often — the army is France. Everybody has served 



l82 THINGS SEEN 

in it; everybody depends on it. The army is 
France. 

Only that unlucky gift of bad logic led France 
astray again. The army being France, they argue, 
the honour of the army is the honour of France. 
Thence they pushed on to the facile fallacy. The 
honour of the heads of the army is the honour of 
the army, and therefore of France. Honour, in 
that sense, apparently means reputation for honour, 
which comes, when you work it out, to the dictum 
that an officer can do no wrong — or at least, if he 
does, nobody may say so. 

The principle does not apply, apparently, to a 
retired general, like de GallifTet. It does not apply 
to a mere captain, like Dreyfus. It appears to apply 
to some lieutenant-colonels, such as Esterhazy, but 
not to others, such as Picquart. 

When Esterhazy refused at the Zola trial to 
answer questions relative to his alleged connection 
with the German military attache, the judge, M. 
Delagorgue, protected him. "There is something," 
said he, "more important than a court of justice — 
the honour and security of the country." "I 
gather," tartly replied Zola's counsel, "that the 
honour of the country allows an officer to do such 
things, but does not allow them to be spoken of." 

Precisely. It came, of course, in practice to the 
divine right of generals. If a general's act was 
questioned, he responded that the interests of the 
national defence demanded it, and said no more. 

France for the most part was quite satisfied. She 



THE DREYFUS CASE 183 

had invented a new kind of government — Caesar- 
ism without a Caesar. 

No general was able or resolute enough to im- 
pose his authority on his fellows. There was not 
even a recognised clique of generals. Any gen- 
eral would do. De Pellieux was neither Minister 
of War nor Governor of Paris ; yet it was really he, 
and not the judge and jury, who tried and con- 
demned Zola. De la Roque was not even on the 
active list, yet an open letter from him to the judges 
and witnesses at the Rennes court-martial was 
paraded in almost every newspaper in France as if 
it had come down from Sinai. Had any Minister 
of War desired to make himself dictator or bring in 
a Pretender, such was the all-accepting meekness of 
the country that he could have done it. None 
dared, and none of the Pretenders thought the 
sceptre worth picking up out of the gutter. The re- 
sult was that nobody knew who was ruling France 
at any given moment, or, indeed, knew anything at 
all — except that, whoever was ruling, it certainly 
was not the President nor the Ministry of the Re- 
public. Summarily the Republic, during the three 
years of the Dreyfus agitation, abdicated. 

There was nothing surprising in that : the corrup- 
tion and cowardice of Ministers, Senators, and 
Deputies had been amply demonstrated by the 
scandal of Panama. It only finally shook what 
was already tottering. 

But the effects of government by generals were 
new and dismal. It was bad enough that they 



i84 THINGS SEEN 

should arrogate power to override every authority 
in the state ; yet to usurp is a generous crime, and 
to permit the usurpation of the army was in France 
-a generous weakness. The dismal portent was the 
utter incapacity which the generals displayed. The 
Dreyfus case was their own game, and they had 
all the cards ; but for the life of them they could 
not play a single one correctly. Wherever it was 
possible to bungle or vacillate, they bungled and 
vacillated. 

They first admitted in the press that Dreyfus was 
condemned on secret documents — ^that is, illegally — 
and then denied it in the Chamber. They first 
contended that Dreyfus wrote the incriminating 
bordereau, because it was like his natural hand- 
writing ; then that he traced it, because it was more 
like Esterhazy's. They tried to entrap Picquart by 
bogus cryptograms that would have been childish 
in a comic opera. They filled the air with assevera- 
tions of their loyalty to the Republic while they 
were openly violating its fundamental principles. 
They declared that for the paramount honour of the 
country they would prefer a revolution to the 
revision of the Dreyfus case ; then, when it came 
to the point, submitted in tame silence to the Cour 
de Cassation and General de Galliflfet's orders. 
Worst of all was t'heir behaviour, where at least you 
might have expected dignity and spirit, in regard to 
foreign Powers. They withdrew from Fashoda 
and renounced Egypt for ever rather than fight 
Great Britain, although Marchand's appearance 



THE DREYFUS CASE 185 

there was the hoped-for cHmax of the dehberate 
poHcy of years. One day they inspired impertinent 
fables about the Kaiser's communications with 
Dreyfus ; the next they sheepishly denied them on 
the threats of his ambassador. The great inter- 
national result of three years of government by 
generals is that France has virtually showed herself 
unfit for war by sea or land — afraid of England, ter- 
rified by Germany, the vassal of Russia — all but a 
second-rate Power. 

"What is to become of your army in the day of 
danger?" cried General de Pellieux at the trial of 
Zola. "What would you have your unhappy sol- 
diers do, led under fire by officers whom others have 
striven to discredit in their eyes? . . . It is to 
a mere butchery they are leading your sons." It 
is — or would be, if France were mad enough to 
fight. There would be as ruinous a collapse as in 
1870. Only that would not be the work of 
"others," but of the leaders of the army itself. They 
are indeed discredited — by their own folly. Few 
people yet believe in their honesty, and now none in 
their capacity. Every man in France who knows 
anything of the last three years' history, in his heart 
distrusts his beloved army utterly. That is the 
sum of what the generals, with everything in their 
favour, have been able to do for France, for the 
army, and for themselves. 

The degradation of politics and of the army has 
been equalled by that of the press, France has 



i86 THINGS SEEN 

never had a journal — unless we except the 'Temps* 
and the present incarnation of the 'Matin'' — which 
an Anglo-Saxon public would call a newspaper ; but 
then she does not want one. She has had journals 
which supply what she wants — well-considered and 
elegantly written essays on the subjects of the day. 
Such she still finds in organs like the 'Figaro' and 
the 'Journal des Debats' ; but in the lower ranks of 
the press the fatal influence of the Dreyfus case has 
told vilely. American papers appear to an English- 
man free-spoken in their attacks on opponents ; but 
the cheapest rag in New York would blush for the 
recklessness, gullibility, and foulness of the baser 
French press. Restraints of good taste and decency 
are quite obsolete. You call your political op- 
ponent "a prodigy of corruption both in public and 
in private life ; with thirty years of lies, debauchery, 
bribery, defamation, and calumny behind him." 
The Prime Minister, if you dislike his policy, you 
describe as "only half cleansed of the murder of 
Carnot, the butcher of Madagascar, Hanotaux's 
accomplice in the extermination of the Armenians." 
You never speak of General de Galliflfet by name, 
but as "the assassin of May" ; they will know whom 
you mean. M. Cavaignac being personally irre- 
proachable, it is well to hark back to his ancestors, 
and call him the heir of two generations of mur- 
derers. Never say your opponent published his 
opinions ; say that he vomited them. You can 
hardly go wrong in describing anything you dislike 
as ordure. With foulness go intimidation, obtuse- 



THE DREYFUS CASE 187 

ness, spiritlessness. During the trial of Zola many 
newspapers headed their issues for days with the 
names and addresses of the jurors, accompanied by 
suitable instigations to violence. During the sec- 
ond court-martial on Dreyfus an ingenious little 
paper in Rennes ran a serial, giving the story of an 
Alsatian spy in 1870 named Deutschfus, who se- 
duced an honest girl, and then returning as an 
uhlan, shot her, and kidnapped her child. The 
credulity of such newspapers equals their violence, 
and they readily gulp down the wildest stories and 
clumsiest forgeries. And when an occasion comes, 
like the Fashoda crisis, in which a strong lead 
might fitly have been given to the nation, nothing 
was forthcoming except alternate bluster and pul- 
ing. With one breath they thundered out what 
things they would do if they could; with the next 
they wailed for compassion because they could not 
do them. They inquired into the possible cause of 
the national decadence quite openly, and wound up 
with "Poor France !" 

Poor France indeed! The government paraly- 
tic, her army cankered, her press putrid — what re- 
mains to her? The Church? The Church re- 
mains, but the influence of the Catholic leaders 
and the Catholic clergy in the cause of anti- 
Semitism has discredited her among all fair-minded 
men. The law? The law has been broken and 
mended to order for the advantage or the disad- 
vantage of individuals ; and while the Cour de 
Cassation has done its duty most honourably under 



i88 THINGS SEEN 

difficult circumstances, lesser magistrates have been 
found to surrender the law to partisanship or to 
fear. M. Quesnay de Beaurepaire was one of the 
highest judges in France, and his silly spitefulness 
has made him the unpitied laughing-stock of the 
world. 

Then what remains ? Why, Rennes ! The storm 
of party bitterness, folly, weakness, knavery, has 
swept over from Paris into its own Lycee; yet 
Rennes basks unmoved under its sun. Walk down 
the drowsy streets. Look at the Breton people — 
the shopkeeper^ the blue blouses, the little lace caps 
over women's faces bronzed with field-work. There 
are yet people in France who are courteous and 
kindly, simple and frugal and brave, who earn their 
living, and love their kin, and do what the priest 
tells them, and are ready to die for France. There 
are millions more of them all over the provinces. 
Paris looks down upon them, and the whole world 
outside hardly knows of them ; but they are the 
real strength of France. It is theirs to work while 
Paris talks, to earn what Paris squanders, to heal 
when Paris wounds. 

The Dreyfus case is the deepest cut which Paris 
has scored on the nation's body since 1870 — per- 
haps since 1789. But it has not reached the vitals, 
and the provinces may heal it as they have done 
again and again before. The recuperative power 
of France has ever amazed the world, merely be- 
cause the world has thought that France spelled 



THE DREYFUS CASE 189 

only Paris. The provinces do nothing else but 
recuperate. 

Only that process, especially with a dwindling 
population, cannot go on for ever. There will come 
in the end a day — and sooner, perhaps, than we 
think — when Paris will have sucked the nation dry, 
and the provinces will have no more to give. 
France will still be France, but no longer a great 
Power, And in some ways the demand which 
these three years of factious frenzy have made on 
France is more exhausting than any of those from 
which she has recovered. In 1815 and 1871 it was 
comparatively easy for a united^people to revive 
after foreign war. After the Revolution, when the 
whole fabric of society was swept away, there was 
a great faith wherewith to build up everything 
anew; and after that the miracle of Napoleon. In 
1899, after the Dreyfus case, the great institutions 
of France still stand ; but everybody knows them 
rotten. There is no faith ; and because there is no 
faith, there will be no miracle. 



THE JUBILEE.^ 
I. 

LONDON'S NEW GAME. 

London is a great big baby. Its mother, tlie 
Queen, has given it a new toy, and London "has for- 
gotten everything else, and sat down to play with it. 
It calls its new toy the Diamond Jubilee ; a sixtieth 
anniversary has nothing to do either with a dia- 
mond wedding or a jubilee, but London will have it 
so, and children's whims must be humoured. We 
are going to play with our toy in our own way, and 
make-believe just as much as we like, Stewart 
tartan has nothing in particular to do with her 
gracious Majesty, and red, white, and blue are the 
colours of either France or Holland. But what 
does that matter? If we call them Jubilee things, 
they are Jubilee things ; they shall be Jubilee things. 
Let us play with our Jubilee in the way we like. 

So London — strange child — has pulled out all its 
little wooden boxes of bricks and piled them up all 
over the fronts of its houses, and has made little 
bows and rosettes and streamers out of bits of stuff, 
and picked up odds and ends of wire, and bits of 
glass bottles, and twisted them into stars and 
crowns and V.R.'s. In Piccadilly it has tried its 

•Daily Mail, June 1897. 
190 



THE JUBILEE IQI 

little fingers at drawing roses and things to put up 
on masts, and they have come out very much like 
other babies' first attempts. In one place it has 
even essayed a map of England : it looks like a 
badly-battered coal-scuttle, and the country next to 
it is spelled "Holand," but it is not at all discredit- 
able for a beginning. It is adding hide-and-seek 
to the other game, putting up little fences across 
such places as the Duke of York's steps, and the 
north side of St. Paul's Churchyard, with little 
doors to pop your head out of and say "Bo !" Oh, 
yes, London is going to have a good romp. And 
London — good child — has invited all its little 
brothers and sisters and cousins from the provinces 
and the colonies to come and play with it at its 
party. 

I suppose the Diamond Jubilee, like other things, 
came gradually. I suppose observant people 
noticed its coming, and marked how it spread itself 
over the town, and soaked into the brains of the 
people. But to anybody who comes back to Lon- 
don and finds it burst upon him suddenly, it is as- 
tounding, stunning, paralysing. People don't 
seem to notice it or to realise what it all amounts 
to. I feel inclined to stop people in the street — 
people on whom it has stolen gradually — and ask 
them if they know what they have been doing while 
I have been away. There is a learned judge : does 
he know that he is creeping shyly into his club up a 
narrow deal staircase that I should have sworn was 
the gallery entrance of a penny show? Does that 



192 THINGS SEEN 

gallant general pacing- stiffly up St. James's Street 
realise that he is traversing a large advertisement 
of Harrod's Stores ? Can our City princes not have 
noticed that somebody has stuck a lot of carpentry 
on the very pediment of the Royal Exchange? 
Somebody else has boarded up the Law^ Courts, 
and barristers and solicitors stoop and dive in as if 
they were going to clean out their chicken-houses. 
The Houses of Parliament are all scaffolding, too, 
and at first, seeing no reports in the papers, I 
thought they had been abolished while I was away. 
But yesterday the flag was up again, which contra- 
dicted that theory, and left the impression that all 
the woodwork was put up that honourable mem- 
bers might practise sitting on the fence. Even to 
take a penny boat at Westminster you have to go 
under a sort of triumphal arch of joinery. I be- 
lieve somebody has even been washing a house in 
St. Paul's Churchyard, and then stuck paper flowers 
all over it. The Duke of Devonshire, you would 
have said, was a solid, level-headed man enough, 
but he has let some imbecile adorn his house with a 
childish subtraction sum — 1837-1897: seven from 
seven is nought, three from nine leaves six ; answer, 
sixty ; sixty years' reign ; fancy ! They are actually 
changing all London from building into furniture. 
One house in Piccadilly is being covered all over, 
first with woodwork, and then with chintz, like a 
new sofa. And in a few days, if it goes on as it has 
begun, St. Paul's Cathedral itself will be turned into 
a comfortable red-baize ottoman. 



THE JUBILEE 193 

And the shops ! They are all playing at Jubilee 
their very hardest. Jubilee favours, Jubilee ties, 
Jubilee medals, Jubilee flasks. The tailors have put 
bunches of Jubilee ribbons on top of their summer 
trouserings, though I, for one, shall refuse, abso- 
lutely, to have my next pair trimmed with red, 
white, and blue. I have observed a gallant boot- 
maker, who could hardly produce a tricolour shoe, 
or pretend that his guinea boots would be desirable 
in after-years as a memento. So he has written up, 
"A large stock of boots for immediate wear." "Im- 
mediate wear;" note the suggestion: buy quickly, 
lest the Jubilee be upon you, and you find you nave 
no boots fit to do it justice. Only two tradesmen 
have I seen who kept their heads, and their self- 
respect, through the crisis. Both carry on busi- 
ness in the Borough Road. One was concealed 
behind a forest of gold and scarlet flags and a 
cataract of crimson drapery — concealed, but not ob- 
scured, for he had labelled the gorgeous mass with 
the legend, "Back door to barber's shop." The 
other had written up, "Business as usual," and in 
the gloom behind the hoarding I saw the collarless 
merchant leaning against his doorstep smoking his 
clay — carrying on business as usual. But nearly 
all the other shops have quite forgotten them- 
selves. They have entirely forgotten what they are 
there to sell, and have taken to selling themselves. 
They have made plans of themselves, and price- 
lists, forgetting in their confusion that it is quite as 
easy to look at a shop as to look at a plan. And 



194 THINGS SEEN 

there they stand, some decently covered with red, 
but most naked and unashamed, and offer them- 
selves for sale in the public street ! And one of 
them, in Fleet Street, has gone further still. "Dia- 
mond Jubilee to let," it audaciously proclaims. It 
sounds hke an exaggeration; London has hardly 
got so far as that yet. Yet who knows ? Nothing 
would surprise me less than to hear that a syndi- 
cate had bought up the Diamond Jubilee, and was 
letting it out for garden-parties. 

I walked down Cheapside yesterday, and I give 
my solemn word that everybody there was talking 
Jubilee. I caught no other sound. Jubilee, Jubi- 
lee, Jubilee, they intoned, as if it were a kind of re- 
ligious Htany. I said I walked, but it would be 
more correct to say I ricochetted down Cheapside. 
Rebounding from one solid body to another, I was 
propelled down Cheapside. For London's cousins 
from the country have arrived at the party very 
early, and they do not altogether know the ways of 
the house. Great bunches of them in frock-coats 
and bowlers, and stifif silk gowns, insisted on stand- 
ing still suddenly in the midst of the pavement in 
front of the Mansion House. Dear people, they 
didn't know how naughty it is to stop dead in front 
of the Mansion House, and there ought to have 
been somebody there to tell them not to do it. 
They go stumping all up and down London's house, 
touching London's things, fingering its monu- 
ments, and testing its internal communications. 
They go by the South London Electric Railway by 



THE JUBILEE 195 

the half-dozen together. "J'^st one station to see 
what it feels like;" and "Have some," says Darby, 
pulling a neatly half-peeled orange out of his tail- 
pocket; "it'll freshen you up." They all freshen 
us up. But we can't be angry with them. 

It is all very ridiculous, if you like to take it that 
way. But if you like to take it the other way, it is 
also very sublime. Go into the smoke-soiled back 
streets, off the line of route. There you will find in 
one house a poor little Union-Jack sticking up its 
undaunted head out of the top corner of a broken 
window. Next door to it is a Royal Standard — a 
cheap brand-, of flag, it appears, for it has only one 
side, and the back is a formless jumble of blue and 
red and yellow threads. Next to it again is a home- 
made V.R. — trace with a piece of pencil on a piece 
of paper; cut the red cloth to the pattern, and 
fasten it up with tin-tacks. You need to see the 
Jubilee decorations in little before you appreciate 
the meaning of it all in gross. These poky little 
flags and red letters are the key-note of it all. 
London is settling down to play: but all through 
the game it never forgets the love and reverence 
for the mother who inspires it. 



II. 

QUEEN AND EMPIRE. 

The Queen's procession has passed. It is over, 
and we are all the richer and all the better for it. 



196 THINGS SEEN 

We have seen a sight the Uke of which no eye has 
seen since the world began. We do not know 
whether we want to laugh or to cry. But how 
proud, how proud we all must be to-day ! 

At St. Paul's it began like any other show. We 
were boxed up between the pillars and the wall in a 
little cage of carpentry. There were pillars in front 
of us, and I doubt if people quite realise the massive 
stability of the pillars in the portico of St. Paul's 
until in the exercise of their professional duty they 
are called upon to see through them. There were 
also beams across the pillars, and across the line 
of sight. But never mind all that; we could see 
down Ludgate Hill. And Ludgate Hill was be- 
decked and bedraped as I never saw any street 
before in London or anywhere else. Pale purple, 
pale gold, and pale green — masts and hanging 
brackets and swinging garlands — a long, drooping 
vista of pillars and capitals and festoons, all softly 
harmonious. Any decoration can make a street 
brilliant if there is enough of it, but Ludgate Hill 
was beautiful. It was quite transformed from the 
sooty, busy Ludgate Hill of work-days. Under the 
still shy, half-watery sunlight it dipped down to the 
railway bridge, this also flagged and flowered for 
the great day, with two girls in white in the centre 
for a focus, and then sloped up through the Circus 
to Fleet Street, with the turret of Lincoln's Inn Hall 
crowning the distance. It was all a sheen with a 
mellow radiance, still enough for dignity, but yet 
shimmering with life. For the chief of all the 



THE JUBILEE 197 

decorations were the masses of swaying white and 
pink in the windows, hning- every house from 
foundation to topmost storey and massed on every 
roof. London had decorated itself with London- 
ers, and with men and women from every part of 
England and every inch of the world where people 
stand up for "God save the Queen." 

It began like any other show, with a maze of gay- 
coloured women looking for their seats, with foot- 
guards marching through the barrier to the top of 
Ludgate Hill and lining up along the churchyard 
pavement. There were the ponderous vans labelled 
"City Commissioner of Sewers" lumbering between 
the banks of colour, as if the Empire had turned 
out to see them scatter sand. Then the place 
cleared ; the last summer gown fluttered to its own 
place; the scarlet guardsmen were all in position; 
the last sand-cart lumbered away eastward. All 
was ready ; we waited for it to begin. 

It began, as it should begin, with the fleet. 
Swinging and dancing up the hill came the tilted 
straw hats of the naval guard of honour. The 
fifes screamed out, "They All Love Jack." And 
how they do love Jack ; how the hill and the church- 
yard thundered! And how worthy Jack is to be 
loved. Clean limbs, strong bodies, trim, alert, re- 
sourceful, self-reliant, their buoyant march quivered 
with young life; their eyes were set with 
the steadfast calm of men who have been left alone 
with God's wonders at sea. Beside them marched 
their bearded captains and lieutenants, quiet, self- 



198 THINGS SEEN 

possessed, intent on the business they know and 
love; and their middies, pink-faced boys, already 
men in self-command and the habit of commanding 
others. There was good marching after that, but 
no marching so elastic as this. The sight of that 
magnificent guard was worth the whole day's prep- 
araltions in itself. We felt we could never go 
wrong with these men. And how good to feel 
that we were showing them to the representatives 
of every nation on earth — showing them the finest 
force in the whole world. 

They formed up and we waited again. Another 
clash of music from beyond the railway bridge, and 
we were looking at what all England was longing to 
look at — the Colonials. But first a scarlet-plumed 
figure on a white horse pacing up the street, and all 
the street breaking into a roar as he came up. 
Roberts ! Three cheers for Roberts ! Bobs, Bobs, 
Bobs ! What a proud and beautiful horse, that 
hardly felt the ground it trod on, and what a man ! 
Hard-bitten, tanned face, the white moustache sit- 
ting firmly on the firm mouth, bolt upright, yet easy 
in the saddle — Lord Roberts was every inch a sol- 
dier and a captain of men. When Sir Charles 
Napier first heard Braham sing he went up to him 
and said, "Sir, it is men like you that make men like 
us." It is men like Lord Roberts that make queens 
like Queen Victoria. 

The cheers sank, but they did not die, for before 
there was time for that we were looking at the 
Colonials. In the carriages we saw the square, 



THE JUBILEE 199 

strong, invincibly sensible faces of the men who are 
building up great nations, new big Englands, on the 
other side of the world. Between the carriages 
rode and tramped the men who guard the building, 
and who carry British peace and British law into the 
wildest places of the earth. Lean, hard-knit Can- 
adians, long-legged, yellow Australians, all in one 
piece with their horses, giant, long-eyed Maoris, 
sitting loosely and leaning back curiously from the 
waist, burned South Africans, upstanding Sikhs, 
tiny lithe Malays and Dyaks, Chinese with a white 
basin turned upside-down on their heads, grinning 
Hausas, so dead black that they shone silver in the 
sun — white men, yellow men, brown men, black 
men, every colour, every continent, every race, 
every speech, — and all in arms for the British Em- 
pire and the British Queen. Up they came, more 
and more, new types, new realms at every couple of 
yards, an anthropological museum — a living gazet- 
teer of the British empire. With them came their 
English officers, whom they obey and follow like 
children. And you began to understand, as never 
before, what the Empire amounts to. Not only that 
we possess all these remote outlandish places, and 
can bring men from every end of the earth to join 
us in honouring our Queen, but also that all these 
peoples are working, not simply under us, but with 
us — that we send out a boy here and a boy there, 
and the boy takes hold of the savages of the part he 
comes to and teaches them to march and shoot as 
he tells them, to obey him and believe in him and 



200 THINGS SEEN 

die for him and the Queen. A plain, stupid, un- 
inspired people, they call us, and yet we are doing 
this with every kind of savage man there is. And 
each one of us — you and I, and that man in his shirt- 
sleeves at the corner — is a working part of this 
world-shaping force. How small you must feel in 
face of the stupendous whole, and yet how great to 
be a unit in it ! 

The British Empire fell in along the pavement, at 
the top of Ludgate Hill, and round the churchyard, 
and there waited. Presently there was another stir 
and bustle at the bottom of the hill, and another 
burst of brass. There came into sight under the 
bridge and up the hill a moving wall of men and 
horses. First more bluejackets, trailing their guns 
behind them, hauling on to the ropes so steadily and 
evenly that the guns seemed to be alive and walking 
of themselves. Then cavalry and guns — now 
massed bands crashing out music, now serried 
squadrons, now gliding horse-batteries. They 
came like a wall, as close, as perfectly even, and level 
and smooth ; the squadrons looked as if they had 
been put together with a spirit-level and trimmed 
W'ith a plane. The approach to the Cathedral 
was a blaze of blue and scarlet; the sun on swords 
and helmets laced the blue and scarlet with gold. 
The eye was filled with splendour, but fresh splen- 
dour came crowding in on it. The advancing 
pageant shifted and loosened and came up in opener 
order. But as the mass of colour became less 
massive, it became more wonderfully coloured. 



THE JUBILEE 201 

Here, riding three and three, came a kaleidoscope 
of dazzling horsemen — equerries and aides-de-camp 
and attaches, ambassadors and princes, all the 
pomp of all the nations of the earth. Scarlet and 
gold, azure and gold, purple and gold, emerald and 
gold, white and gold — always a changing tumult of 
colours that seemed to list and gleam with a light of 
their own, and always blinding gold. It was 
enough. No eye could bear more gorgeousness ; 
no more gorgeousness could be, unless princes are 
to clothe themselves in rainbows and the very sun. 
The prelude was played, and now the great moment 
was at hand. Already the carriages were rolling up 
full of the Queen's kindred, full of her children and 
children's children. But we hardly looked at them. 
Down there, through an avenue of eager faces, 
through a storm of white waving handkerchiefs, 
through roaring volleys of cheers, there was ap- 
proaching a carriage drawn by eight cream- 
coloured horses. The roar surged up the street, 
keeping pace with the eight horses. The carnage 
passed the barrier ; it entered the churchyard ; it 
wheeled left and then right ; it drew up at the very 
steps of the Cathedral ; we all leaped up ; cheers 
broke into screams, and enthusiasm swelled to de- 
lirium ; the sun, watery till now, shone out sud- 
denly clear and dry, and there — and there 

And there was a little, plain, flushed old lady. 
All in black, a silver streak under the black bonnet, 
a simple white sunshade, sitting quite still, with the 
corners of her mouth drawn tight, as if she were 



202 THINGS SEEN 

trying not to cry. But that old lady was the 
Queen, and you knew it. You didn't want to look 
at the glittering- uniforms now, nor yet at the bright 
gowns and the young faces in the carriages, nor yet 
at the stately princes — though by now all these were 
ranged in a half circle around her. You couldn't 
look at anybody but the Queen. So very quiet, so 
very grave, so very punctual, so unmistakably and 
every inch a lady and a Queen, Almost pathetic, 
if you will, that small black figure in the middle of 
these shining cavaliers, this great army, this roaring 
multitude ; but also very glorious. When the other 
kings of the world drive abroad, the escort rides 
close in at the wheels of the carriage; the Queen 
drove through her people quite plain and open, with 
just one soldier at the kerbstone between her and 
them. Why not? They are quite free; they have 
no cause to fear her ; they have much cause to love 
her. Was it not all for her — the gala trappings of 
the streets, the men and horses and guns, the living 
walls of British men and women ? For the Queen 
summed up all that had gone before, all the soldiers 
and sailors, the big-limbed colonial, the strange 
men from unheard-of islands oversea. We knew 
now what that which had come before all stood for ; 
we knew as we had never known before what the 
Queen stands for. The Empire had come together 
to revere and bless the mother of the Empire. The 
mother of the Empire had come to do homage to the 
one Being more majestic than she. 

There were the archbishops and the bishops and 



THE JUBILEE 203 

the deans in gold and crimson caps and white and 
orange and gold-embroidered vestments, waiting on 
the steps. There, through the gaps in the pillars 
and scaffoldings, you could see all her Ministers 
and great men — a strange glimpse of miniature 
faces as in some carefully laboured picture where 
each face stands for an honoured name. All stood, 
and the choir sang the Te Deum. The Queen put 
on her glasses and looked gravely at the shoal of 
grave faces. Next rose up a melodious voice in- 
toning prayers. The Queen bowed her head. 
Then the whole choir and company outside the 
Cathedral and the whole company in the stands and 
at the windows and on the housetops and away 
down the street, all standing, all uncovered, began 
to sing the Hundredth Psalm. "Come ye before 
Him and rejoice :" the Queen's lips were tight, and 
her eyes — perhaps it was fancy — looked dim. But 
then "Three cheers for the Queen!" and the dean — 
pious man ! — ^was wildly waving that wonderful 
crimson cap, and the pillars and roofs were ringing 
as if they must come down. Then "God Save the 
Queen" — a lusty peal, till you felt drowned in 
sound. The Queen looked up and smiled. And 
the Queen's smile was the end and crown of it all. 
A smile that broke down the sad mouth, a smile 
that seemed half-reluctant — so wistful, yet so kind, 
so sincere, so motherly. 
God Save the Queen ! 



204 THINGS SEEN 



III. 



TO VIEW THE ILLUMINATIONS. 
{An Agricultural Household on an Omnibus.') 

We are not showing anything at the Royal this 
year — not, of course, that our beasts are not good 
enough to show. The truth is they are too good — 
and assuredly too much beloved — to be exposed to 
the journey to Manchester and back in weather like 
this.. So it was felt that something might be done 
with a clear conscience to celebrate the Diamond 
Jubilee. To leave the sacred beasts by daytime was 
naturally out of the question, so it must be some 
evening. The illuminations it must be. The il- 
luminations from an omnibus ! And Wednesday 
would be a nice quiet day for it. On Wednesday 
the excitement of Tuesday would be dying away; 
we could just nip in on Wednesday, when every- 
body else had seen the show and was going early to 
bed. Nothing, moreover, was expected to foal, 
farrow, calve, or hatch on Wednesday. Nothing 
even showed any sign of immediate death. 
Heather and the infant calf were doing as well as 
could be expected, and no more bulletins were to 
be issued ; the foals and the goslings would be 
neither more nor less incorrigible alone than with 
nine infants to correct their misdemeanours ; Peter 
and John, wrongfully accused of diphtheria, had 
picked up wonderfully under a strengthening diet 



THE JUBILEE 205 

of beef, brandy, roup-pills, and the dogs' dinners. 
Yes, for one evening, perhaps, we could dare to 
leave them alone. And the gardener's brother-in- 
law had kindly consented to patrol the place, firing 
salutes from a shot-gun to the glory of Her Majesty 
and the confusion of all poachers. 

The omnibus was duly hired — five guineas, to be 
paid out of the profits of the barren Shetland mare, 
v/hen anybody has the sense to pay the price for 
her. The railway carriage had been reserved, both 
ways. The children were all carefully festooned 
with Jubilee medals and Jubilee ribbons and filled 
to the brim — filled, in Willie's sad case, even to 
overflowing — with Jubilee cake and tea. All was 
ready — when the ducks, the pious ducks, the only 
children who had never given a moment's anxiety, 
seized the occasion to begin to die. They actually 
refused food; they flopped themselves on to their 
backs, waggled their yellow legs heavenward, and 
quacked feebly at the sun. We gasped. In any 
other beast it would have been but natural ; if the 
ducks were going to turn against us and die we 
were ruined indeed. All was done that man can 
do; it always is at our farm, where prodigies of 
labour balance the want of land and capital ; and it 
is generally done in vain. However, we buried the 
ringleader, the ungrateful wretch that had set the 
example of decease, isolated his two principal ac- 
complices, after steeping them carefully in water, 
and soaked their run from innumerable cans and 
buckets — think of it, in the sun of Wednesday 



2o6 THINGS SEEN 

afternoon! — till it was as near a pond as is con- 
sistent with not swimming off marketable flesh. 
They came to a better frame of mind towards even- 
ing, and condescended to cram their crops as usual. 
We had done all we could. We tried not to think 
of them; we paraded at the back-gate, twenty-six 
strong — twenty-six weak would, perhaps, be the 
correcter way to put it — to be joined by a flying 
column of three at London Bridge. We marched 
to the station ; we hoisted in the cake-laden infants ; 
we were off. To view the illuminations ! 

We beguiled the journey with light-hearted 
prattle about the misadventures which might prob- 
ably befall us. The ordinary imaginative mind 
dwelt deeply on the likelihood that the omnibus 
might upset. The fancy of bandy-legged, owl-eyed 
Septimus soared higher ; the two ruling passions of 
his life being engines and hospitals, his mind and 
cheerful conversation ran rather to railway acci- 
dents. He estimates the desirability of a residence 
by the probability of finding an engine standing in 
the nearest station; while, having been an inmate 
of most of the hospitals, and having had his toys 
unintentionally broken by half the eminent surgeons 
of London, he is an acknowledged expert on frac- 
tured limbs. So that when he declared of his per- 
sonal knowledge that the rails were breaking under 
the stress of Jubilee traflic, he was listened to with 
quaking attention. Until Eddy cut him out with 
the apprehension that the illuminations might set 
his new straw hat on fire. 



THE JUBILEE 207 

Amid general disappointment all arrived safely 
at London Bridge. But the sight of the clean 
omnibus standing empty and expectant paid for all. 
An omnibus with horses, driver, and conductor 
complete, that can't go without you, that stops and 
goes, fast or slow, and turns up this street or that 
at a word from the master or the missis — this is not 
a joy vouchsafed to everybody. The top of an 
omnibus, in theory, holds about eighteen; we got 
twenty-seven oua With loud and prolonged 
screams we debouched into the Borough. 

Ah! Ee! I-i-i! Oh-h-h! Uh-h-h-h! Every 
vowel was tried, but no vowel could do justice to 
the emotions ! Look at them flags ! Look at they 
seats ! Look at them flowers ! Look at they peo- 
ple ! I am thankful to think that we were not 
wholly unconspicuous, even in the Borough. The 
untutored inhabitants tried some of their local wit 
upon us, but it was quite wasted ; we took it quite 
literally. When they asked — what more natural ? — 
where we went to school, we gave the name readily 
and politely, explaining that we had a month's holi- 
day, and meantime were having lessons at home. 
V/hen they Inquired, — as anybody would who did 
not know us, and how well we can take care of our- 
selves — whether our mothers knew we were out, we 
introduced our mothers, as a reassuring proof that 
they were out too. The driver kindly pointed out 
the principal objects of interest, such as St. 
Thomas's Hospital and the Houses of Parliament; 
but, though we came from the country, we hardly 



2o8 THINGS SEEN 

needed it. Nearly all of us had been in London be- 
fore ; some of us know it very well, though we are 
succeeding in forgetting it. London has not be- 
haved well to our household, taking it as a whole. 
We can get on quite well without disease or star- 
vation, or being sold for a penny, or assaulted with 
intent to kill, and we don't mind if we never see 
London again. Still there is a certain satisfaction 
in knowing the river Thames when you see it. 
And Joe, despite the fact that he all but cut both 
hands oflf in the pond-sluice the other day and still 
reeks of iodoform, perked up at the sight of a 
racin' four-oar. "I know all this place, I do," he 
remarked, confidently, having spent the first three, 
of his eleven years in Chelsea. We know London 
well enough, some of us ; only as the parts we know 
best are mostly being pulled down by the County 
Council, or raided by the police, we mayn't know 
it very long. 

Hence there are some things new even to us. 
V-I-N-O-L-I-A going in and out in red and white ; 
how is that for a wonder of the world ? The crowns 
and stars and V.R.'s — a mistake, by the way, for we 
know that queen begins with Q, not R — and 1837's 
and 1897's and "God — bless — our — Queen" ; why, 
we can read it all. Look at that light spinning 
round! You'd think 'twould put he out to spin 
round like that. Look at that bridge across the 
street. Now we can't go any farther; we didn't 
know there were so many omnibuses in the world. 
And Eddy, relieved by finding his hat still uncon- 



THE JUBILEE 209 

sumed, remarked, "It must be lovely to be a queen." 
If Eddy were queen this sort of Jubilee would hap- 
pen every night. But to Seppy's mind the decor- 
ations presented one unexplained feature which had 
to be cleared up. "What happened in 1897?" he 
wanted to know. 

Then Tubsy spoke. Tubsy does not speak often, 
but when he does he speaks to the point. He is 
employed on the lighter branches of farm-work, at 
which he is worth some four men and a boy, on a 
living wage of about a penny a month. When he 
reaches the age of four he may receive even more. 
Already he is wont to groom the cows with a dandy 
brush, and then stands long before them in silent 
adoration. "Don't they look nice now I've done 
they up," he remarks at last. His special charge 
is the calves. "I think the caaves love me," he 
reflected the other day, and I think they do; only 
they know that the great sahib Tubsy is not a per- 
son to be trifled with. Now Tubsy had leaned 
against the rail of the omnibus by the space of an 
hour, his head tilted upwards like a drinking fowl's, 
gazing raptly upon the variegated coming and go- 
ing of that blessed word "Bovril" as one who is 
caught up into Paradise and sees wonderful things. 
Then he turned slowly round, and his dark, solemn 
eyes fell on all of us in turn. The lips parted in the 
nut-brown face, and he put a question to the com- 
pany: "Who's mindin' the caaves?" 

It was the voice of conscience. Who, if it came 
to that, was minding the diseased ducks? Who 



210 THINGS SEEN 

was seeing- that the Little Minister, that promising 
stallion, was not chasing the fowls? The foster- 
mother had refused to go below no in the heat of 
the day; who was regulating its temperature now? 
The omnibus still crawled on, but the illuminations 
had lost something. "I bet there's a V.R. near that 
crown," said Eddy, with a well-meaning desire to 
liven things; nobody took him up. The thought 
that the beasts might want refreshment and nobody 
there to give it began to weigh upon all minds. 
Suppose we missed the train and there was nobody 
to milk the cows in the morning? 

It was more than anybody could be asked to bear. 
We got down and left the omnibus derelict in a 
block ; each grown person seized a child, and in 
columns of families we made for the station. We 
got there panting — with thirty-seven minutes to 
spare. We piled ourselves up in a corner, and 
some of us went to sleep and some had beer, and 
we got large glasses of soda-water and poured 
them down the children. But what an air, when we 
got out at our own station, where the people know 
us. The cool and the freshness, the hay and the 
roses ! It was good to get home, and nothing had 
died except one chicken. Thank goodness ! 
"And I've enjoyed myself very much," observed 
Willy, complacently. As he had been sick steadily 
in train and omnibus, we may assume, a fortiori, 
that the others enjoyed themselves too. 



THE JUBILEE 211 

IV. 

THE GREAT REVIEW. 

Portsmouth as an institution is the headquarters 
of the British navy. Portsmouth as a dwelling- 
place is a strange mingling of a seventeenth-cen- 
tury country town, an eighteenth-century watering- 
place, a flashy seaside resort of to-day, and a 
slummy seaport of all time. 

Houses as quaint as Staple Inn, back squares as 
dignified as Georgian Brighton or Weymouth, are 
sandwiched between eligible boarding-houses and 
fishy rum-shops. Portsmouth is a history of the 
British navy worked out in buildings. But to-day, 
old and new, all wear the same livery of blazing 
bunting. Bunting, we may assume, is plentiful in 
Portsmouth if anywhere, but you would have hardly 
thought there was so much of it in any given town 
on earth as Portsmouth is clothed with to-day. 
You cannot see the town for the flags. Portsmouth 
is tapestried with them, walled with them, roofed 
with them, everything but floored with them. Every 
kind of flag in every kind of place ; none of the for- 
eign blue-jackets need go unhappy for want of his 
national colours. The crescent of Turkey flaps 
across the street, side by side with the chrysanthe- 
mum of Japan. Next to them the Kaiser's eagle 
pecks at a recondite ensign bearing a sun in the 
left-hand top corner, and a forest of blue and white 
bars, which may stand for Uruguay or San Do- 
mingo or Liberia for aught I know. The sailors of 



212 THINGS SEEN 

the King of Siam's yacht will doubtless find their 
native elephant displayed in its due place, though 
I have not discovered it yet. 

Portsmouth is at this moment not merely the 
headquarters of the British navy, but the generous 
host of every navy that musters in the world. There 
is no mistake about the loyalty of Portsmouth. 
You may not find here Ludgate Hills or St. James's 
Streets, Arcadian avenues of green or fairy palaces 
of light. Portsmouth is a plain town, mainly en- 
gaged in sending Her Majesty's ships to sea as 
efficiently as may be, and has neither time nor 
money for pantomime effects ; but having started 
out to beflag itself, Portsmouth has beflagged itself 
with a will from top to bottom, from town-hall and 
grand hotel to lodging-house and cottage. The 
elegant villas of Southsea are gay, but the alleys 
of Gosport are even gayer. Look down each nar- 
row, dark, smelly little court, you will find it hung 
across and across with flags^ — flags drooping out 
of the windows, flags spread-eagled on the walls. 
"Long hath she reigned !" is by now, perhaps, a 
little trite as a piece of news, even though it be 
reinforced with the figures that give arithmetical 
demonstration of its truth. All the same, you don't 
call such vigorous attention to the fact unless you 
are glad that she hath reigned long. But judged 
by such signs, the poorest streets of Portsmouth 
are very glad indeed. The popular joy goes much 
deeper into the back streets than it does in London 
itself. 



THE JUBILEE 213 

But comparisons are invidious. The whole coun- 
try is as loyal as itself, and it could not be more. 
On the way down, every suburb, country town, and 
village — Surbiton, Guildford, Haslemere, Liss — 
added its show of flags. Every little labourer's cot- 
tage had its Union- Jack stuck jauntily at the top 
of the highest tree. It is the whole nation which 
is celebrating this Jubilee — there is no room to 
doubt that' — and patriotic satisfaction in this cer- 
tainly went a long way to mitigate the sufierings of 
the journey. For all the world is pouring out of 
London, just as a few days ago it was pouring in. 

The booking-ofifice at Waterloo suggested a com- 
bination of the boat-race. Ascot, and Cowes. Peo- 
ple slung with field-glasses swarmed up and down 
the packed trains, and then sank weakly back to 
wait for the next, which was coming in five min- 
utes, rather more tightly packed than the last. All 
the trains are coming down, but none are going 
back. I saw a corpulent Midland special calmly 
bivouacked on the South-Western line at Fratton; 
they are waiting till after the great to-morrow, for 
an Englishman who leaves Portsmouth to-day is 
no countryman of Nelson's. Where in the mean- 
time Portsmouth hides its rolling stock I know not, 
unless it has stacked it all in the docks. There 
is plenty of room in them, for all Her Majesty's 
ships have gone out to Spithead to keep Her Majes- 
ty's Jubilee. 

Portsmouth is patrolled by the intelligent strang- 
er — cockney, countryman, and foreigner. He is 



214 THINGS SEEN 

here in all his kinds and all his thousands, flourish- 
mg his guide-book in the native face, and Ports- 
mouth is probably beginning to learn as much 
about its local antiquities and objects of interest 
as we have lately been forced to do in London. 
Camera on back, studious of the guide-book and 
with peering eye cocked above it, the tourist makes 
his house-to-house visitation of the town, or per- 
ambulates the empty dockyard, or pays his penny 
toll with righteous indignation at Haslar Bridge. 

But the chief sight at Portsmouth remains — its 
ships and men. Just now both ships and men are 
supplemented from all the nations of the earth till 
Portsmouth is like an enlarged and improved re- 
production of the blockade of Crete. 

The foreign bluejacket roams unchecked from 
fruit-stall to tobacco-shops, conversing affably, as 
his manner is, without understanding the inhabi- 
tants or being understood by them. This afternoon 
there were black-browed little Spaniards, tall, dull- 
eyed Russians, and heavy-limbed Germans all pass- 
ing up and down the streets, under their own 
swinging flags and everybody else's. It may be 
blind-eyed national prejudice, but none of them 
seemed to me to possess just that combination of 
supple strength and resourceful resolution that is 
the hall-mark of our own beloved bluejacket. But 
it is not polite to say this just now, especially seeing 
that it is quite understood that they are all fine 
fellows. Essentially harmonious and joyful was a 
party of three German bluejackets, being shown 



THE JUBILEE 215 

round by a bugler from a line regiment. He was 
prattling away in London English, and they an- 
swered fluently in North German. They were 
making remarks about the shops : he was under 
the impression that the subject of conversation was 
Spanish bluejackets. "They none of 'em under- 
stand English," he said, not without a touch of 
scorn. 

And what about the fleet all this time ? Well, the 
fleet is there, I know on the very best authority. 
But to-day the fleet is lying out there between 
Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, ship after ship, 
line upon line. But for to-day the fleet has veiled 
itself in haze from premature curiosity. You will 
see it in all its majesty in due season. Meanwhile, 
the sky over Portsmouth is thick and heavy, as with 
the soot of many chimneys. You may stand and 
look out to sea, but you will hardly find the fleet. 
The grey sea is scored by the wake of a fleet of 
launches coming in and going out ; here and there 
is a white boat with men in blue tugging rhyth- 
mically at the oars, and a dark still figure in the 
stern. But the boats dive behind the curtain of 
mist, and you cannot trace them to their homes. 

Only when the sun shines can you see the pale 
gleaming outline of what looks like an enormous 
city. Left and right it stretches for miles and miles, 
till it is lost in the thicker clouds. In front of you 
it towers up eagerly to giddy heights. Very thickly 
built the city seems, with black foundations and 
lighter, airier structure above. Here you can see 



2i6 THINGS SEEN 

a row of factory stacks ; there a slim mast. That 
shadowy city is the British fleet. Not all of it, not 
nearly all of it, but as much as we are going to 
show this time, without taking away anything from 
any of our squadrons abroad, The black founda- 
tion is the hulls, the lighter upper storeys are the 
superstructures, the stacks are funnels, and the min- 
arets, masts. Through your glass you can make 
out some of it, — a black venomous destroyer with 
a head like an adder's, a more graceful-bodied 
cruiser, a great battleship riding like a fortress, with 
a torpedo-boat just discernible against its dark side. 
You can make out quite enough to feel lost and 
annihilated in the presence of so many tons of 
weight, so many knots of motive-power, so many 
smithereens of destructive force. But all that is 
for to-morrow. For to-day let it remain the ghostly 
city, the dim promise of a wonder such as the world 
never yet saw. 

V. 

THE GREAT REVIEW — {continued). 

All through the week of Jubilee our English 
weather has maintained Its splendid reputation. In 
Portsmouth the last two or three days it has even 
exceeded it. Sun-striking heat on Thursday ; sullen 
haze on Friday ; a perfect day for the review ; a 
perfect deluge for coming home in ; a perfect night 
for the illuminations ; and a general epilogue of 
mug and fog for the slack day. After it, our colonial 



THE JUBILEE 217 

and foreign friends cannot complain that our 
famous weather has not shown all its phases. On 
Friday night it looked any odds on a fog which 
would have muffled up the fleet till you had to 
grope after it ship by ship. But on Saturday morn- 
ing the mist had all cleared. 

The place had filled itself to bursting with dis- 
hevelled hordes, who had dozed throughout the 
night in special trains, and arrived to find breakfast 
in Portsmouth almost as undiscoverable a quantity 
as disloyalty. How m.any people had come to see 
the great show I do not know, and it does not par- 
ticularly matter. It is sufficient that if there had 
been many more they would have had to feed on 
the air and sit in the sea. At any rate, there was a 
very vast multitude, and they had come to see a 
very vast and moving spectacle. Breakfast or no 
breakfast, they did well to come. They were going 
to see the right arm of the British Empire. 

It looked as though the whole people of the coun- 
try was emptying itself out into the sea. The chan- 
nel out of the harbour was like the way to St. Paul's 
last Tuesday. — a hurrying pilgrimage, with boats in 
place of men and women. Big white pulling boats, 
and Httle twin-funnelled steam-pinnaces from the 
fleet, thick-set government tugs, shining to-day like 
the trimmest of steam-yachts, painted tripper steam- 
ers, big, towering ocean liners, — they trooped at 
each other's heels, all streaming out to see the fleet. 
Every boat was black and blue, red and white, with 
soldiers and sailors and plain men and women. The 



2i8 THINGS SEEN 

plain man and woman do not usually take much 
notice of the fleet of which they are part owners. 
But a week like this was just the time to take stock 
of it — to see the m.ost wonderful assemblage of sea 
power there had ever been. It was a thing to be 
seen at all costs, just for the sake of seeing. But it 
was also a thing with a good deal of thinking be- 
hind ; the seeing a lesson as well as a spectacle. 

And when we steamed out along the tortuous 
channel, between heavy old stone forts, break- 
waters, railway sidings, beaches, and piers buzzing 
with crowded people, there, sure enough, was the 
fleet plain to view. Not gleaming mysteriously 
through a gauze of mist as it had done the day 
before, but quite plain — hard outlines for the nearer 
visions, softer suggestions for the farther ; but all 
quite unmistakably plain and solid, very solid. The 
fleet was a very hard fact, quite motionless. The 
big ships stood up majestically on the calm, green 
water, and the little ones lay along it meaningly. 
At first view the fleet was in no particular order that 
revealed itself. It was simply a crowd of ships, a 
flower-garden of signal-flags, a scaffolding of masts 
and spars, a factory of funnels, a long continuous 
wall of black hulls. In fact, they were gathered so 
thick that you could not see through them to the 
coast of the Isle of Wight. Away to the west they 
stretched — away, away, away; masts and funnels 
and black hulls running one into another for ever 
and ever. Right away westward ran the line, faint- 
er and fainter, but there was no end to it. 



THE JUBILEE 2ig 

As our boat came up and began to circle round 
them, the whole shape of the fleet suddenly- 
changed. Out of chaos came suddenly the precisest 
order. For now we had come abreast of the lines, 
and could see the formation in which the ships lay 
at their moorings. First came torpedo-boats, and 
the little devils were moored so true that they 
looked like one vessel. From the tall liner I was 
on you looked down on to the black lane of the 
boats. What with the flags and the crowd of men's 
heads, it looked for all the world like a street deco- 
rated and crowded for Jubilee Day. Then the de- 
stroyers are more devilish than the boats, their long 
low sides cuddled down to the lapping water. Next, 
cruisers : a vista of graceful masts and tall, grace- 
ful funnels, very unlike the squat, dogged-looking 
funnels of the destroyers. And last, we came to the 
double line of stately battleships, rising out of the 
water like kings, strong and confident. Every kind 
of vessel, powerful or swift, according to her kind. 
You looked down the dwindling avenues between 
their even lines until once again they ran together 
in the distance, but still there was no end to it. 
You were not seeing the fleet at all, it suddenly oc- 
curred to you. You were only trying to see what 
nobody with only one pair of ordinary human eyes 
ever could see. It would not come together into 
one sight; — it was far too big for that. But what 
the eye lost the mind gained. Look at all you 
could take in, and then multiply it by about ten — 
that was the fleet lying here to be reviewed. But 



220 THINGS SEEN 

then you had seen any number of ships beside, lying 
in the docks and basins — some just completing, 
some a mere skeleton of girders, some, alas! quite 
fit to go to sea, but with no crews to take them. 
And when you had added on that, it was time to 
remember that we have a fleet in China waters, a 
fleet in the Pacific and the Indian Ocean, in the 
North and South Atlantic, and in Australasia. Not 
a ship more than we need. But add up all that, 
and then you will begin to get an idea. Yet no, 
you won't. Still, you will be nearer to an idea of 
the tremendous might of the machine which holds 
together the British Empire. 

You got a suggestion on Tuesday how big the 
Empire is on land. On Saturday you added an 
inkling how big it is on every sea. We are great 
in fertile Canada and Australia, in populous India 
and Africa, and in the rich islands of East and 
West, because we are yet greater on the naked sea. 

That was the great lecture propounded by the 
lines of warships on Saturday. 

People here said that the review, as a show, was 
less than exciting, that it was even a little dull, 
that if there had been ten or twenty ships less or 
more it would have looked exactly the same. Pos- 
sibly. Only the lecture would not have been the 
same, as the point was the question of the fleet, and 
the greatness of the need for it — at once a boast and 
a warning. And yet to my eyes the mere sight was 
a monstrously fine one. A warship is fine beyond 
almost any other sight there is to be seen. Beauty 



THE JUBILEE 221 

lies in expression, they say, and there is nothing 
more expressive than a warship. It has at once the 
buoyant mobihty of Hfe and the heavy soHdity of 
matter. The long guns run level, and if the ports 
suggest horrible destructiveness — tons of steel 
tossed about here and there and crushing men un- 
der them to jelly, — at the same time the brilliant 
polish on the guns, a polish you could shave by, 
is very human, and speaks of afifection for the grim 
beauties that is as pretty as the guns are terrible. 
And there was a kind of pathos, too, in a tiny little 
launch that was gliding in and out of the lines with 
a very frothy wave behind her. That was the Tur- 
binia — an experiment in a new method of propul- 
sion, already the fastest thing afloat, and with pos- 
sibilities of further speed almost illimitable. If that 
shrimp of a turbinet comes to anything, all these 
black and yellow leviathans are done for. So they 
are if somebody invents a flying-machine; so they 
are if you top them with a torpedo. All the tops of 
steel, the labour of years, the millions of money, 
the masses of ingenuity, and the treasures of devo- 
tion and courage, — they are all gone in five minutes. 
That is the pathos and the beauty of a warship; it 
is so very strong and so very weak. 

There was plenty of time to moralise about this 
or anything else you felt a leaning to during the 
long wait between taking up your berth and the 
arrival of the Prince of Wales. But at about two 
o'clock there was a gun fired : he was there. There 
was a bustle in the ships, and some blue-black 



222 THINGS SEEN 

figures already lying out along the yards sprang up 
and stood motionless till the ship seemed rigged 
with living men. In others, the newest ships, too 
sternly new and businesslike to be fitted with the 
tackle for such amenities, the bluejackets lined the 
sides and bulwarks, with scarlet marines to give a 
dash of gaiety to what was rather smart and pur- 
poseful than gaudy. It was not nearly so variegated 
as Tuesday, despite the signal-flags, but always bar- 
ring the Queen, — why was she not there? — it was 
not a whit less majestic, for as the Prince's proces- 
sion reached each division the ships saluted. The 
banging guns from all these ships would have made 
a very heavy action on land. They were firing from 
their smallest guns ; but even that probably meant 
as much energy, certainly as much noise and smoke, 
as a big army all through a day's fighting. In a 
minute half the fleet had vanished — blotted out by 
the coils of lazy smoke, guns crashing, bands blar- 
ing, thousands of lusty seamen cheering. The in- 
specting yachts and the big steamers come by. 
Among the last was the huge Campania, dwarfing 
almost everything, and steaming very slowly lest 
she might tread on the toes of some of the little 
ones. One by one the boats passed away behind 
the smoke. 

That was the review. Crawling carefully back, 
we ran into the thunder-storm. It came up blackly 
from the Solent before we could say "It's raining." 
The decks were a tumult of dancing water, lightning 
was splitting the sky with rents of fire. Thunder 



THE JUBILEE 223 

was cracking like to deafen the very guns. The 
ships stood up, tall and wan, against the lurid sky. 
The firmament seemed to be bursting asunder. The 
ships stood up to it unmoving and unflinching. 
What is a storm to them? 

But some colonial officers aboard us admitted 
that they would hardly have believed it of a tem- 
perate climate, and we natives were very proud to 
have been able to show it to them. For the most 
part the colonials were too dazed with wonder and 
joy at the aspect of the fleet to take much notice of 
any thunder-storm. They could hardly speak about 
it, and when they did, it was in half-tones, solemnly : 
"It has been a wonderful day to us — a wonderful 
day." 

The thunder-storm was only an episode. Having 
done its business, it went dutifully away, and left 
the field clear for the illuminations. Out on the 
sea front you could see the lights of the fleet like 
glowworms in the dark. Then suddenly there 
sounded a gun; and as I moved along Southsea 
Common there appeared in the line a ship of fire. 
A ship all made of fire — hull and funnels and mili- 
tary masts with fighting tops. And then another, 
and another, and another. The fleet revealed itself 
from behind the castle, ship after ship traced in fire 
against the blackness. From the head of Southsea 
there still came on fresh wonders of grace and 
light and splendour, stretching away, still endlessly 
as in the daytime, till they became a confused glim- 
mer six miles away. It was the fleet, and yet not 



224 THINGS SEEN 

the fleet. You could recognise almost any ship by 
her lines and rig^ — just as if it had been in day, only 
transmuted from steel and paint into living gold. 
The admirals still flew their flags as in the day, only 
to-night the flags were no longer bunting, but pure 
colour. The hard heavy fleet vanished, and there 
came out in its stead a picture of it magically paint- 
ed in pure light. 

For three hours the miracle of brightness shone 
wondrously at Spithead. At half-past eleven or so 
the Prince returned the second time as before, and 
the golden fleet sent a thunder of salute after him. 
Then, as I stood on the high roof of the Central 
Hotel, the clock struck twelve, and before my eyes 
the golden fleet vanished — vanished clean away in 
a moment. You could just see it go. Here half 
a ship broken off, there masts and funnels hanging 
an instant in the air. It all vanished, and nothing 
at all was left except the rigging lights, trembling 
faintly once more on the dark sea. 

Was it a dream? Was the fleet melted indeed 
into the air? We had seen the fleet that day, and 
"we knew better. The great day was passed, but 
we knew the fleet was there. We took that away 
with us to remember: the fleet was there. 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER.i 
I. 

As we crawled nearer to Bayreuth on the dusty 
Sunday afternoon, we seemed to be entering upon 
an outlying province of the United States of Ameri- 
ca. To be sure there were Germans enough — high- 
busted, bare-elbowed German girls and German 
young men in light-coloured reach-me-downs and 
straw hats with a binding of black ribbon round the 
tilted brim. But these all dropped off as the train 
dawdled at each wayside station : they were only 
going to the usual diversions of a country Sunday 
afternoon. The Americans were going to Bay- 
reuth, and the German language began to die away 
in the American. 

All down the long train there buzzed the Ameri- 
can tongue ; out of each window looked a group of 
American girls. Four girls and a woman to one 
elderly weary-looking man was the proportion, as 
always ; and the man, as always, was working away 
at baggage, and porters, and guards, and refresh- 
ments for the comfort of the girls. All were taking 
their pleasure as their manner is on Sundays and 
holidays — talking, talking, talking, in a perpetual 
gush of chatter about things that did not matter. 

' Daily Mail, July 1897. 
225 



22(i THINGS SEEN 

But it was much that they were not talking about 
Wagner. 

Bavaria was going to sleep under the heavy sun. 
But when at last the train strolled into Bayreuth, 
Bavaria was awake indeed. It was a queer mixture. 
The little old town is like any other little old town 
in this part of the world — old brown houses that 
seem nearly all old brown tiles, the deep-eaved 
roof sloping heavenwards to double the height of 
the windows. They look Hke toys which have been 
shut up unplayed with for a century. But the big, 
cobble-stoned, triangular square outside the sta- 
tion was quite full. The station hotel had flags of 
all nations flying. Crowds lined the station steps, 
and packed right back as if a royal procession were 
coming. Partly they were peasants, who don't quite 
know who Wagner is, looking on the tourists, who 
surged out in a maddening torrent, with amusement 
and some contempt. 

The Bavarian peasant is like any other peasant, 
only more so. The rough brown suit that covers his 
big limbs is not browner than his face; only the 
square set of his shoulders reminds you of those 
three years in the army, and his heavy movements 
and big wide-awake can never loosen him quite into 
the mere boor again. But if the peasant smiled to 
see these crowds of strangers fighting their way 
into Bayreuth from heaven knows where, the true 
Bayreuther did not. He knew what they were all 
there for — they had come to make his fortune. 

I fancied last night that Bayreuth didn't care. 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 227 

They were promenading the town just as on every 
other Sunday night, whipping off their hats to each 
other, and tucking them for a moment under their 
elbow, just as every other German. There were 
accordions playing in the little outlying beer- 
houses, and bare-headed girls waltzing together. 
I had seen two Englishmen in my hotel, hideous in 
shapeless dust-cloaks, but very reverentially eating 
the rosbif of the holy city. After that it seemed 
horrible that the accordions were not playing at 
least the overture to "Tannhauser," and I marvelled 
that Bayreuth should be so insensible. 

But I was wrong. Certainly Wagner came to 
Bayreuth, and not Bayreuth to Wagner, so that 
Bayreuth had a right to remain unresponsive if it 
liked. But it did not. It briskly grasped what may 
be called the mark-and-pfennig aspect of the Meis- 
ter's genius. When I took up my room at the hotel 
the waiter called my attention to the price, marked 
in plain figures on the door. "To avoid misunder- 
standings later," he sweetly remarked, and perhaps 
the precaution is a wise one. My hotel is a good 
little inn enough, though nobody could call it first- 
class. But the proprietor has incautiously left about 
a little memorandum with the price of each room 
marked thereon. If they are all full, as they are, it 
comes to something over £9 a-day, and nearly 
£300 for the month's season — not half bad for a 
little country inn, not counting profits on meat and 
drink, and considering the value of money in Ger- 
many. And all Bayreuth does the same. 



228 THINGS SEEN 

A barber who shaved me had quickly put his 
price up to 3f d., a great sum in this country ; but 
then he had assisted at the final rehearsal of "Par- 
sifal," had even helped make up the artists, and the 
extra i|d. was not more than his conversation was 
worth. Of course there is no shop without its bust 
of Wagner in the window, from terra-cotta an inch 
high to colossal plaster of Paris, and the last looks 
very engaging against a background of little tin 
uhlans. Moreover, Bayreuth does not wait for you 
to come and buy ; it comes round to you with 
m.otherly care, and insists that you should equip 
yourself thoroughly against the festival. "Have you 
got your book of leitmotives?" said an old lady to 
me, quite sharply, this morning. I dared not say 
that leitmotives were of no use to me, for fear I 
should be slapped, or not allowed to go to the per- 
formance; so I weakly said I had. After all, to 
sell such things is what the shop is for. But I never, 
never thought I should live to see the orchestral 
score of "Parsifal" hawked about the streets like an 
evening newspaper. 

While I have been writing this little bit more 
special trains from everywhere have been coming 
in, and have flooded the place with English girls. 
It is curious that Wagner seems to appeal with 
special potency to the unmarried girl, and I don't 
know whether he would be altogether pleased if he 
knew it. At this moment the marriageable female 
population of Bayreuth appears to be something 
like eighty per cent or so of the whole. When I 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 229 

went down to lunch I found the restaurant quite 
full of English girls — girls in shirts and white belts 
and blue serge skirts. They order their lunch very 
distinctly in English, and are rather annoyed when 
the stupid fellow doesn't understand them. But, 
luckily, our hotel has two English-speaking waiters. 
The senior one, I fancy, is responsible for the in- 
scription, "Here are carriages cheap, to let," which 
appears in all the rooms of the hotel. To-day both 
are in great form ; they even swagger a little, and 
talk to each other in English. "More little spoons," 
cries one. "No little spoons left, only small 
spoons," answers his fellow. There are no marks 
to-day — only shillings. The poor native German 
is quite wiped out. The German is not, as a rule, 
the most retiring of men ; but to-day he sits discon- 
solately waiting to be served. It is even pathetic 
to see him furtively feel at the horn of his waxed 
moustache, fearing that it may have gone out of 
curl, and that this is responsible for the unwonted 
neglect of his wishes. Meanwhile the English study 
maps of Bayreuth, and wonder intelligently that 
there are so many Roman Catholic churches — as if 
they expected to find the Wesleyan connection 
especially strong in Bavaria. 

In the aspect of most of these ladies there is 
something that rebukes me. There is a look of 
high purpose in their eye as they order lunch, which 
tells me that I am wrong to take my food as food ; to- 
day it is the sustenance in the strength of which one 
hears "Parsifal." They look very coldly on the bar- 



230 THINGS SEEN 

maid of the restaurant, who wears her sleeves short 
at the elbows, and a little short at the neck — surely 
a very innocent device, and eminently calculated to 
lessen the heat of the weather and increase the sale 
of beer. But one should not consider these vanities 
to-day. To-day one may, indeed, drink Rhine wine ; 
but, again, as a sort of sacrament, as if it came out 
of the Grail. Though there is, indeed, one jolly red- 
faced dame in a Jubilee ribbon, who seems to feel 
that a country where you can get a pint of wine 
for a shilling is one that she has neglected too long. 
What is she doing in Bayreuth, I wonder? For 
that matter, what of the earnest-eyed young lady 
who is explaining "Parsifal" to her friend? "There's 
not very much tune in it," she says, "but at the 
end there's the Good Friday music — very pretty." 
I can't leave ofif thinking what Wagner — who was 
not the most tolerant of men tov»^ards mediocrity 
— what poor Wagner would think to-day if he could 
be present at his apotheosis. 

But now the carriages are filling up, and rolling 
ofT towards the theatre. We must go. Have you 
got your tickets, your opera-glasses, your German 
and English texts, your orchestral score, your map 
of Bayreuth, your life of Wagner, your commentary, 
and your chart of leitmotives ? Now ! Hush : Let 
us go. 

n. 

It was beginning. The huge wedge-shaped thea- 
tre was black as night. Fifteen hundred people 
hardly breathed. Yet, though you saw nothing and 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 23I 

heard nothing, yon could feel the air charged with 
expectancy. Up over the living darkness stole the 
first soul-thrilling bars of the prelude to "Parsifal." 

Nevertheless it had taken a good hour to get the 
multitude settled down into its proper disposition 
of rapt attention. It had begun to take its way to 
that theatre — the Feast-play-house is the right 
name for it in Bayreuth — by half-past two — an hour 
and a half before the first note was due. Between 
the regular lines of trees rolled two streams of car- 
riages, some hastening to set down, the others to 
find somebody to take up again. Under the trees 
stood the inhabitants of Bayreuth watching the 
stream go by ; there jostled them a long column 
of foot-passengers, moving perpetually at a steady 
two miles an hoiu- up the gentle rise towards the 
theatre. There were English, Americans, French, 
and Germans, Gentiles and Jews, soldiers and civ- 
ilians — it was strange to see cavalry lieutenants in 
uniform, the full score under their arms, going to 
hear an opera at three in the afternoon — old men 
and little girls, shaggy-haired virtuosi, and untu- 
tored children of nature from the western prairies. 

You may smile at Wagner as you will ; yet, gen- 
ius or charlatan, it was no ordinary personality that 
could draw together this motley crowd in his hon- 
our. Bear in mind that you cannot pay less than 
£5 for your tickets alone, to say nothing of com- 
ing to Bayreuth and staying there. Many of these 
people may have had the vaguest idea of the differ- 
ence between a leitmotiv and a Buhnenweihfest- 



232 THINGS SEEN 

spiel, may hardly have known who Wagner was. 
But the fact remains that Wagner somehow im- 
pressed himself enough on the world to make peo- 
ple think it worth spending £5 per head and up- 
wards to hear and see his works in the way he 
thought they should be heard and seen. 

We came to the red-brick theatre — -the most 
hideous I ever saw. It is the naked skeleton of a 
theatre, with all its anatomy — vestibule, auditorium, 
flies, dressing-rooms — sticking out unashamed, 
with no attempt to hide or beautify them. It is not 
built for show. Except at festival-time there is 
nobody to look at it, and at festival-time everybody 
is naturally looking at everybody else. And as- 
suredly everybody else was well worth looking at. 
I suppose it must be rather a perplexing problem 
how one is to dress for a theatrical performance in 
the country which begins at four and ends at ten. 
Wonderful indeed were the solutions of it. The 
women, for once, were less wonderful than the 
men. The women merely wore evening-dress, or 
dinner-dress, with a bonnet, or garden-party dress, 
or travelling dress, or shirts and bicycle skirts, ac- 
cording as they regarded it as town or country, 
morning or evening. The English and American 
men wore the tweeds and serges, straw or felt hats, 
and yellow boots, which they consider good enough 
for any occasion abroad. 

But the German men ! There was just one gen- 
tleman in correct frock-coat, light trousers, and 
tall hat. Another came very near him, but had ap- 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 233 

parently mistaken the feast-play for a funeral — he 
was in deepest mourning. Several wore evening- 
dress, with black ties ; one had invented a kind of 
combination dress-and-frock coat — frock buttoned, 
dress unbuttoned' — which, but for its general gro- 
tesqueness, was plainly the very thing for the oc- 
casion. But these were hide-bound conventional- 
ists beside the play of fancy which others showed. 

Among the dresses, as they say in the Society 
column, we noticed the following: Correct morn- 
ing-dress, with a straw hat; correct evening-dress, 
with shepherd's plaid trousers and brown boots ; 
frock-coat and cricket cap ; black morning-coat, 
Leghorn straw hat and knickerbockers; frock- 
coat, white waistcoat, and a kind of gilt deer-stalk- 
er ; frock-coat, sombrero, grey hair down back, and 
bit of sausage sticking out of mouth ; frock-coat, 
straw hat, duck trousers, no waistcoat, tartan tie, 
another kind of tartan shirt, and a third kind of 
tartan cricket-belt; brown knickerbockers, grey 
flannel shirt, patent-leather shoes, no coat, no waist- 
coat, no hat. 

You will imagine that time passed quickly and 
enjoyably in the contemplation of this scene. Be- 
fore I had absorbed the half of it there stepped to 
the threshold of the theatre half-a-dozen men with 
brass instruments. A little man in a frock-coat and 
a bowler ranged himself in front of them. Suddenly 
he began to wave his arms round his head, and to 
this conducting they blew the first few notes of 
"Parsifal." That meant it was to begin in five min- 



234 THINGS SEEN 

utes- — it is the regular signal at Bayreuth. We tum- 
bled up the bare mountainous stairs into the bare 
undecorated theatre. It was not more beautiful 
inside than out. It is a vast sloping wedge, of 
which the stage is the thin end ; the thick end is a 
row of boxes for royal persons and suchlike; be- 
tween are the stalls. There is nothing else but 
stalls — tier on tier of cane-bottomed seats, rising 
gradually from the stage. Each seat costs £ i, and 
in theory each is as good as each of the others. In 
practice the back side seats — need I say mine was 
a back side seat ? — are not quite as good for seeing 
as the front middle seats. 

On the other hand, they are probably better for 
hearing : an enormous orchestra does not combine 
properly unless you are some distance from it ; al- 
though at Bayreuth, by a most admirable arrange- 
ment, the orchestra is tucked away under the stage, 
and you cannot see it. Take it altogether, this is 
the most practical opera-house in the world. It 
would never do in London — it is not very comfort- 
able, and the difficulties in the way of seeing who is 
in the house are almost insuperable. But in Ger- 
many, where people go to the opera to see and hear 
operas, it is exactly what you want. Stern, bare, 
utilitarian, just simply a place to see and hear from. 
It is exactly what you want. 

The lights went out; the rustle of people went 
out as suddenly; the prelude began. The prelude 
ended, and the first act began. From the audience 
there was not a single sound. The youngest Ameri- 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 235 

can girls tried a whisper or two at first, but even 
they were awed into silence. There was more than 
one point where I should like to have laughed ; but 
amid this strained attentive rapture no laugh came. 
The first act lasted an hour and three-quarters ; no- 
body stirred or made a sound. There was an inter- 
val of three-quarters of an hour, and then the second 
act lasted an hour and a quarter ; nobody stirred or 
made a sound. Then another interval of three- 
quarters of an hour, and a third act of an hour and 
a half. Perhaps twenty people — mostly Americans 
— had gone home; still nobody made a sound. 
Four hours and a half of solid music, without a 
tune to hum in the whole of it ; 1500 people, a good 
third of them from the two least-to-be-awed peoples 
on earth, and not a voice, or a cough, or a banging 
seat from the lot of them ! 

What do you make of this, anti-Wagnerian? With 
Germans you can understand it ; they are trained 
to sit at attention ; one German fainted with devo- 
tion, which was the only distraction of the day. But 
English and American men and women don't sit 
four hours and a half motionless on cane-bottomed 
seats for the sheer enjoyment of being cramped 
and uncomfortable. Then why do they it? True, 
they have got to do it, once they are inside the 
place ; but why do they come ? Partly, perhaps, it 
is because of the dehcious hohday setting of the 
piece. You go out of the dark, reverence-stricken, 
human-smelling playhouse after the first act to sit 
in the sun and look away over the broad Bavarian 



^Zd THINGS SEEN 

valleys, with fir-grown ridges between; after the 
second act to eat your dinner, as the evening cool 
exudes freshly out of the half-dried woods and 
corn-fields ; at the end to walk home in the mys- 
terious night. 

But that cannot be the whole reason of it. It 
would be too wild to suppose that these people take 
Wagner as a kind of bitter pill to put an edge on the 
sv/eetness of Nature. Fashion may have something 
to do with it, but most of these people were any- 
thing but fashionable. They did not look as if the 
£io-note it cost them to come had many fellows 
in their pocket-books. And do you think they 
would come thus to a Mozart festival, a Gounod 
festival, even to a composer of the "Washington 
Post" festival? 

Then there must be something in Wagner after 
all — something that makes its appeal to the plain 
man as well as to the musician. But you don't want 
to hear my views on Wagner. 



III. 

It finished last night ; and the time has come for 
buying mementoes of Wagner. This part of the 
business especially concerns the Germans. You 
would imagine, indeed, that anybody who had put 
through the week at Bayreuth would never need to 
be reminded of Wagner again as long as he lived. 
But that is not the German view. The German 
never quite believes that he has been to a place un- 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 237 

less he brings away some childish toy with the 
place's name written on it. His family does not 
believe he has been there unless he brings home 
similar toys for them ; a "Mitbring" — "with-bring" 
— is the magnificently simple name for such. You 
feel somehow that there is no getting away from 
plain hard duty in a language that uses such direct 
terms as this. 

So the shops are crowded this morning. The be- 
wildered shopkeepers — hardly awakened even yet 
to the fact that there is once more something doing 
in Bayreuth — are helplessly protesting in their 
hquid Bavarian dialect that they haven't got any- 
thing that anybody could possibly want to buy, and 
are then being conducted outside in solemn pro- 
cession to be convinced by the presence of the arti- 
cle where they put it in the window a week ago. 
You can buy many kinds of articles in Bayreuth, 
but they all bear on Wagner. It looks best, think 
some, to buy an orchestral score ; though, to be 
sure, you can get that just as well anywhere else, 
and, for my part, I prefer to pretend that I've got 
it already. Many buy photographs of the artists — 
those solid German artists — or of the stage-scenery, 
or of the outside of the theatre, or of Bayreuth in 
general, or else imaginative pictures of Rhine maid- 
ens as they would be if the law did not compel them 
to appear in clothes. 

But all these are a little commonplace. How 
much better to get a meerschaum cigar-holder 
carved into a head of Wagner — the place where 



238 THINGS SEEN 

the cigar comes giving him the appearance of wear- 
ing a tall hat such as niggers sport on the sands. 
Or how would you like a two-shilling model of the 
Holy Grail ? Or a one-and-sixpenny bust of Wag- 
ner with a red face and black and white clothes? 
Or a Wagner cigarette-case, or a Wagner pocket- 
book, or a Wagner purse? There are little phrases 
out of "Parsifal" neatly scored on each. Or, better 
still, why not a "Nibelungen-Ring" set of liqueur 
glasses, with a leitmotiv from each of the four 
dramas neatly done in gold round the glass ? 

Yes; it has come to an end, and what has it 
amounted to? We have had a masterly perform- 
ance each day — so the local newspapers assure us, 
and they have had experience. For myself, I have 
enjoyed it prodigiously. I have always considered 
Wagner the musician of all others for the plain 
man. He appears to have nothing to do with coun- 
terpoint and such complications. He appears to me 
to have composed his music on the basis of a scale 
of his own, floating about somehow in his head — 
a scale with intervals quite different from those of 
the ordinary scale ; the melodies seem to go along 
and close quite on different principles from anybody 
else's, and yet one note seems to follow another as 
inevitably as those of Mozart himself. Perhaps I 
am talking nonsense. But I am quite free to admit 
for myself that Wagner's music makes me laugh 
and cry, and sends shivers down my back, and turns 
me hot and cold, and ready to jump up and scream 
with excitement. And then another point in which 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 239 

Wagner appears made for the man without musical 
cultivation is that he always keeps his music hand 
in hand with the drama, so that the interest of one 
helps out the other. "The Ring of the Nibelung" 
is surely a most noble work. With all its grotesque- 
ness, it is so large — it took years and years to com- 
pose, and if you began playing it through after 
an early breakfast you would hardly get it done by 
bed-time ; yet it is all in one piece — it is so lofty, 
so much on the grand scale, even where it fails, so 
thrillingly romantic, so poignantly tragic — I defy 
any simple-minded person to hear its four parts 
through on successive days and not be sorry at the 
end that it was over. 

Moreover, when the music is dull — and much of 
it appears to me mere endless repetition of mean- 
ingless phrases — and when the action is dull — cer- 
tainly some of the gods and goddesses are a little 
prolix — why, there still remains the scenery. Wag- 
ner, worthy soul, was happily lacking in a sense of 
humour ; his idea of fun was to bring on a hunch- 
back to be kicked. He was a very literal-minded 
man. Everything that happened in his operas had 
to happen on the stage, so that the people could see 
it ; and Wagner wrote down careful directions to 
that effect in the score. Consequently you get in 
Wagner the most colossal and difficult stage-effects 
imaginable, and it is always a joy to sit and watch 
how they will be tackled. Three mermaids swim- 
ming about in the Rhine is not the easiest thing to 
put on the stage without being ridiculous ; nor yet 



240 THINGS SEEN 

are gods walking over a rainbow into Valhalla ; nor 
yet an ex-goddess on horseback galloping into a 
blazing funeral pyre. They must all be tackled if 
you are to give Wagner as he wanted himself given 
■ — though the two last are more or less funked at 
Bayreuth. Then, on one occasion, Parsifal waves a 
spear — for Wagnerian characters never venture out 
without a spear^ — and a whole magic castle comes 
down about his ears ; in the "Ring" there is a very 
similar scene with the added complication that the 
castle is on fire. Than this last I never saw any 
stage-effect more wonderful : it was so realistic that 
you shuddered as the blazing roof crashed down 
within a foot of the chorus's heads, and marvelled 
that it did not set the whole theatre ablaze. 

How can Wagner be dull with things constantly 
going on like that? And when the music palls and 
the drama stands still and the scenery is doing 
nothing — why, you can always amuse yourself 
watching the animals. For whenever an animal 
appeared to Wagner germane to his story, that also 
had to be brought on to the stage. In "The Ring 
of the Nibelung" there are thus introduced a 
dragon, a snake, a live bear, a dead ditto, a goat 
(with charge), a horse, a couple of ravens, and a 
bird of unspecified breed described as a wood bird. 
Each of these affords perpetual entertainment while 
it is on the stage. The Bayreuth dragon, for ex- 
ample — the only one of the beasts that has a singing 
part — is a triumph. It is as thick as three fat men, 
and larger than a tramcar, yet it moves all over in 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 24I 

the most convincing way. It has a snub nose, a 
sloping forehead, and four huge canine teeth, and 
fire comes out of its mouth; in face it is wonder- 
fully like a bull-dog smoking a cigar. The wood 
bird, again, is very engaging, instead of flying it 
runs along a wire, sometimes sticking for a mo- 
ment, exactly like a spider. 

But Briinnhilde's horse is the masterpiece — in 
fact, it is my favourite character in all Wagner. It 
is real, whereas all the others are imitations. And 
what a noble animal ! He comes on first while the 
goat is performing, and what heroic self-command 
he must exert not to shy at it ! When Siegfried 
parts from Briinnhilde he has to poke his head on 
from the wings, having apparently been hobbled 
for the night in Briinnhilde's bedroom : how osten- 
tatiously and jaw-breakingly he yawned through 
that great love duet ! No opera could be dull while 
that horse was on the stage : you are always won- 
dering whether he won't do something not in his 
part — neigh, or kick Siegfried, or jump over the 
footlights on to Herr Richter, or something equally 
indecorous. He never does ; but there is always the 
excitement of anticipation. 

On the whole, then, we might pronounce Bay- 
reuth most enjoyable. But there is one blot on 
it that spoils all, and that — I grieve to write it — is 
my superior, intellectual, cultured countrymen. The 
German I do not object to ; he goes to Bayreuth 
because Wagner told him to ; when he comes out 
of the theatre he says, "Wunderschon," and there is 



242 THINGS SEEN 

an end of it ; he then drinks beer and talks of some- 
thing else. But the English girl — she is generally 
unmarried, and runs from twenty-five to thirty-five 
— with her accurate knovv^ledge, and her impassive 
ways, and her prim pale face, and that thin, slow, 
unmodulated, very-high-in-the-head voice! You 
know the voice ; it is not a chest voice, nor even 
a head voice ; it is a kind of brain voice, an excellent 
voice to sneer in. And how she sneers ! She goes 
to the theatre and comes out and says, "I wonder 
why Vogl can't attack his notes cleanly," and "Such 
a pity they made such a muddle of the 'Feuerzau- 
ber.' " When she recognises a motiv she labels it 
with its name in an audible whisper. She knows 
all the scenes by their Christian names, so to speak, 
and talks of "the Ritt" as if she went out shopping 
to it. She never laughs — only gives a sort of cough 
half disdain, half pity. I had met some like this, 
but I did not know there were so many in the world 
as I saw last week in Bayreuth. 

I don't like her at all, and I wonder why she 
comes. She doesn't look as if she enjoyed it, but 
perhaps she does, in a way, after all. It is a place 
where she can bask in her own culture. The truth 
is that, except to her, Bayreuth is not a place of 
pilgrimage at all, but only a place of rational enjoy- 
ment after a person's own fashion. The German 
goes there as he goes to church — it is his duty. The 
Frenchman goes to make epigrams, to twist his 
fingers, and say, "Comme qa." The American takes 
it in with his Job-shaming patience as an institu- 



THE FEAST OF ST. WAGNER 243 

tion of Europe. The Englishman mostly goes to 
take the English girl. To the cultured English girl 
alone is Bayreuth a high and holy sanctuary, — it is 
the mirror of her own superiority. 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE.i 

I. 

I knew there must be a famine, because the 'Free- 
man's Journal' said so; but for the life of me I 
could not detect it. 

I had always pictured Western Ireland, and 
especially the county Mayo, and more especially 
the coastwise districts of that same, as an ach- 
ing desolation and destitution. I thought the 
country was a turn-and-turn of rolling screes and 
sopping bog. A guide-book I had picked up in 
the Shelbourne at breakfast warned me that the 
sleeping accommodation at Killala, whither I was 
tending, was little or none. I conceived myself 
shivering in a wet rug on a wet mud floor, snufifed 
at by curious pigs, roosted upon by callous fowls. 
I thought regretfully of the warm soft sand of Afri- 
can deserts. 

And behold, the country through which I ap- 
proached starving Killala was singularly like cer- 
tain grazing districts of England, only more beauti- 
ful. England is green after any other country; 
Ireland was greener with a tenderer and sprightlier 
verdure. Stones there were a many in a few fields, 
and the 4-foot walls of all showed how many there 

' Daily Mail, May 1898. 
244 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 245 

had been before the land was cleared. Bog there 
was also, luridly purple beside the shining pastures, 
with black water in steep-cut trenches, and stacks 
of brown peats beside them. But you couldn't be- 
Heve that this country was very hungry. 

There were cattle upon a thousand hills — milch 
cows, young steers and heifers ; here were ewes, 
and the lambs could hardly suck them for the hang- 
ing mantles of wool ; naked pink pigs gleamed 
along the hedgerows; ducks and geese waddled 
at the head of their families by every blue stream 
and black lough ; the white tree-girdled cottages 
were all a-cluck with laying hens. Where was the 
famine ? It might be lurking somewhere ; but a 
country so alive with beasts could not look starving 
if it tried. 

Out of the window at Ballina — the last station 
before the end of the line — I saw a young priest 
riding as smart a black cob as you ever saw at 
Tattersall's, three young ladies on bicycles, and a 
family in a four-wheeled dog-cart. Thank heaven, 
everybody wasn't destitute. And right on to Killala, 
where there suddenly broke into view a sea as blue 
as an Academy picture, the landscape was still close, 
rich turf, almost exasperatingly succulent. At 
Killala there did, indeed, show a momentary prom- 
ise. The platform was empty but for one porter 
and a man with a long colourless beard, who might 
have been posing as the only inhabitant left. But 
as he took my bag he disclosed the fact that there 



246 THINGS SEEN, 

was indeed an hotel where a traveller could get a 
bed. 

"If yer honour should be wanting to go to Bally- 
cashtle now, to-morrow," he began, "1 have a cyar, 
sorr." It revived one's confidence in the world 
somehow to find that Irish peasants really do say 
"cyar, sorr" ; but when he went on to deplore the 
depopulation of the country, I began to come back 
to the interest of my errand, I was on its track al- 
ready. "How long has that been going on?" I 
asked eagerly. " 'Tis thirrty years now, sorr," he 
replied. And that was all the famine intelligence I 
got out of him. 

Nobody could call Killala a stately city — city, 
mark you ; at any rate, it has a bishop, though only 
500 inhabitants — nor even a strikingly clean one ; 
but Killala also hardly wore the look of starvation. 
The hotel was the best parlour and best bedroom 
of one of the most flourishing shopkeepers, so it 
evidently wasn't fair to judge by that. But the 
smaller houses, though only two rooms, and not 
wonderfully well kept, were as commodious and as 
well furnished with pots and pans and crockery as 
the ordinary English labourer's. Most of them were 
weak in the doors and windows, and there was 
usually grass growing on the thatch ; but as it 
would be perfectly easy to clear it ofif in a morn- 
ing, and nobody seemed to have any very pressing 
work to do, I imagine they prefer their thatches so. 

I went out for a short walk to reconnoitre the 
famine. Everywhere I found the same enchanting 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 247 

beauty of country, the same abundance of stock, the 
same shiftless, apparently contented poverty, but no 
token of starvation. The land rose and dipped now 
into a family of little round knolls, now into a wide 
sweep of valley climbing gently to a round homely 
blue mountain in the distant twilight. Nothing pre- 
tended to be grand, though batches here and there 
were bleak. The country looked gentle and, above 
all, fresh and green. The whole world can show 
nothing like the vivid lustre of Ireland's pastures. 
Close-cropped, undulating, springy, they are such 
fields as turn the mind generally towards a good 
horse. 

It is not all fine grass and clover, and the ex- 
tremity of Mayo is ill-placed for markets ; but more 
than half of the land was such as you would gladly 
pay £3 or £4 or £5 an acre for near London. 
Across it tramped peasants, not so stout as ours, 
and barefooted girls in shawls, to milk the cow as 
she stood in the pasture. When the face turned to- 
wards you out of the shawl you saw carmine cheeks 
and black eyes that left you blinking, or else skins 
of peach-blossom and wide, clear grey eyes that 
filled you with a vague desire to pray. The only 
thing more beautiful than the Irish land is the Irish 
women : even when they are old with the prema- 
ture age of poverty and raggedness, the grace and 
the wonderful eyes and the courteous, modest liquid 
speech compel the homage you would not pay to 
diamonds. And of both men and women you mark 
that while your apparition plainly consumes them 



248 THINGS SEEN 

with wonder and curiosity there is no hint of boor- 
ishness — no echo of our own rustic guffaw. The 
Irish peasant is a natural gentleman, A string of 
shaggy donkeys came up the road, peats in the 
panniers, the %dsion of an angel swinging bare legs 
from the beast's rump, and guiding him with a little 
stick, for all the world like an Egyptian fellah. Then 
another donkey, this time with the panniers half-full 
of provisions from the shop in Killala, a small boy 
perched behind, and his mother tramping after. 
Likely enough the groceries were bought on credit, 
though they may have been bartered for eggs ; at 
any rate, there they were, going home to be eaten — 
which is not a sign of starvation. And below, in a 
field on the skirts of Killala, my eye fell on a large 
round tent. It looked — but, no, not in famine-time 
— but, yes, here was the bill of it before my nose 
on the wall. To-day, at 2.30 and 7.30, Davies's 
World-renowned Circus ! 

I went ; should I ever not go to a circus ? It was 
aptly pointed out on the posters that Davies's circus 
does not depend upon paltry items, but that every 
event is of the highest possible quality. But for 
the moment we are less concerned with the aesthetic 
than the economic aspect of Davies's circus. If my 
counting was right, there attended, exclusive of two 
boys who crawled in under the tent, 309 persons. 
With all allowance for those who came in from the 
country round, 309 is not bad, during a famine, for 
a population of 500. Of the 309, 57 paid is. and 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 249 

249 6d. ; three small girls attended at the expense 
of the 'Daily Mail.' 

The money taken at the door — I hope this is not 
giving away the Messrs. Davies's professional 
secrets — would thus work out at £2, 17s. plus £6, 
4s. 6d.; total, £9, is. 6d. 

Now, £9, IS. 6d. is not a vast sum. And I should 
be the last creature in the world to regret that every 
man, woman, and child in Ireland should attend 
circuses once a week for the whole of their lives. 
They have little enough to amuse them, I should 
say. Lord Salisbury has recommended the diver- 
sion ; and it was an interesting testimonial to the 
wisdom of his famous indiscretion that, while the 
nephew is labouring at Local Government, Killala 
went with the uncle. Circus by all means ; only 
when a district insisted on as especially famine- 
stricken can spare £9 for a circus — well, things 
can't be so very deadly, can they? Of course there 
was plenty of room left in the neighbourhood for 
starving people who didn't go. But the ratepayers 
went, and it has been a familiar cry at Westminster 
that the ratepayers are only a few shillings better 
than the paupers, and that therefore it is brutal 
tyranny to make them pay a quarter of the relief 
works. The money paid at the door of the circus 
means a union's share of a week's relief works for 
120 people. It is compatible enough with poverty, 
but hardly with downright dearth. 

On the evidence of the world-famous circus, as 
well as the general look of things, Killala seemed 



250 THINGS SEEN 

to be drawn blank. I must search for the famine 
a little farther on, 

11. 

The long white road ahead, and the rolling green 
on either hand, the sun on your cheek, and the 
Atlantic salt on your lips, and a big bay mare in the 
car ; in such a country on such a day, how good it 
was to be alive ! Up and down the rough but hard- 
metalled road we swung, then suddenly came down 
at the head of a half-mile stretch of firm sand ; be- 
yond it a bay of intense turquoise ; up the leftward 
cliffs a climbing village; behind us, appearing in 
the corner under a park of turf and trees, a little 
grey stone chapel. 

"The praste will be in the churrch, sorr," said the 
driver. The door was open, and you could see 
kneeling figures in the dusk. Outside, also, in the 
little green yard, a dozen men knelt reverently as 
the bell tinkled within. 

It was a saint's day — I forget the name, but it 
turned out to be the Anglican Ascension Day — and 
by consequence a hoHday. All along the road, afoot 
or in cars, we had seen passing the population — 
the men in decent black, the women in clean gowns 
and shawls. Decidedly the famine had no luck. The 
first day I tumbled on the circus ; to-day, quite un- 
intentionally, I had come on Rathlathan, recom- 
mended as the most starving village of starving 
Mayo, just on the day to see its population in their 
best clothes. 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 251 

When the people came fiHng out of church, I 
give you my word it might have been one of the 
quietest English watering-places in the season. I 
know little of dress fabrics, but the women ap- 
peared far better dressed than I ever saw English 
peasants' wives and daughters. Not a man but had 
his decent black coat. I thought they must surely be 
visitors ; but no visitors — the loss is theirs, as well 
as the village's — ever come to Rathlathan, Its sons 
and daughters were certainly the best dressed 
starvelings I ever saw. 

The priest had blessed the last of the congrega- 
tion, and came out in his vestments — grey-haired, 
with a round face, short nose, twinkling black eyes 
rather close together, and a beard mown rather than 
shaved. He spoke with the brogue of the country, 
a little slow and indistinct, like a recluse with few 
opportunities of 'keeping his tongue oiled for con- 
versation. But he comprehended my business with 
ready courtesy, and took me to his house and gave 
me biscuit and wine, and showed me, by way of be- 
ginning, the books that set forth his relation with 
the Dublin Mansion House Fund. 

There were only ten men receiving relief in the 
whole parish ; but then, he explained, his parish and 
the next were furnishing a couple of hundred to the 
government relief works across the bay, where a 
pier was being built for fishing-boats. The ten — 
we may assume that only ten needed this relief, 
since the fund had supplied plenty of money for 
Rathlathan — were all employed on draining their 



252 THINGS SEEN 

own land, and received 6s. a week. They only work 
five days weekly; what hours, opinion seems to 
differ, some saying eight to two, others eight to five. 
But the curious and very instructively Irish point 
that emerged from the record was that the men on 
the relief works do not work themselves at all. In 
the table headed "Remarks" you saw "Son Michael 
to work," "Son Pat to work," "Grandson Martin to 
work" — somebody else to work for him against 
every name. The work supposed, not so much to 
be publicly useful — it is hardly public works, pay- 
ing a man for improving his own land — as to con^ 
stitute a test of destitution ; unless a man be really 
starving, it is urged, he will not work long hours 
for IS. a day. Only here it turned out that what 
really happens is that somebody else works for him 
at his own land five days for 6s. a week ! I know 
plenty of English labourers, not starving, who 
would be very willing to undergo the same test on 
the same terms. 

His reverence said his flock was poor — poor 
always, especially poor in winter, and poorer than 
ever now, since the potato crop failed last year, and 
since now, at the pinching time, every kind of 
breadstuff had gone up. But for that they miight 
have pulled through ; but the wholly accidental 
blow of the rise in corn on the top of the failure of 
potatoes was too much for them. Their holdings 
are very small — four acres is a large one, and some 
are as little as one or only half an acre. For Rath- 
lathan, you see, ekes out its holdings by fishing — a 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 253 

miserable trade enough at most times, and es- 
pecially unproductive between Christmas and mid- 
May. All that time, said the priest, his flock had 
made nothing off either sea or land. The relief just 
kept them alive on Indian-meal porridge, and that 
was all. For next crop almost everybody had had 
seed potatoes, most oats, and some ryegrass ; but 
that will not tell before next year. 

So said the priest. Thereon, recalling the com- 
plaints that ]\Ir. Gerald Balfour has not done 
enough, I asked him whether, with the existing re- 
lief, his people could carry on till the opening of 
August, when they begin to dig the new potato 
crop. And his reply was not ambiguous. "Yes," 
he said ; "if the present relief continues they'll pull 
through." 

The priest saying that, I take it as certain ; for he 
was at pains, not unnaturally, to put the poverty of 
his people at its very poorest. And, indeed, it was 
plain enough that, if not starving, a fair proportion 
of the people of Rathlathan were miserably indigent 
• — more indigent than anybody willing to work 
ought to be allowed to be. The village, as I said, 
climbs up a hill. It has no streets, unless you call 
such one row of stones and ruts, up and down 
which a man of nerve could drive a sure-footed 
horse. For the rest, you can go from hut to hut up 
precipices of scaling stones with little muddy water- 
falls trickling down over them. 

We went into a hut. The clean smell of peat 
struck gratefully on the nose, and the cottage ap- 



254 THINGS SEEN 

peared through a veil of blue smoke. The floor was 
flagstones, uneven and broken, at one end disap- 
pearing altogether in a litter of manure ; half of it 
was the bed of the cow, now at pasture, and in the 
other, within a flagstone sty, reclined the sow and 
her nine infants. At the other end peat glowed on 
the hearth ; at one side of it, in a corner, was a 
wooden bed, with a wooden canopy over it ; by that 
a dresser with crockery and cooking pots ; by the 
hearth a couple of stoolsy — and that was all the 
furniture. In the middle of the room a dozen fowls 
squabbled over what looked like a handful of meal. 
"That," said the priest grimly, "is the cleanest cot- 
tage ye'll see for a long while." 

The others to my eyes were not appreciably 
dirtier, but they were no cleaner either. As we 
stumbled and slid from one to another I observed 
how the good Father ensured that the poverty of 
his flock should lose nothing by demonstration. 
As thus : — 

Priest {entering'). Who lives here? 

Inmate. Good marning to yer reverence; 
good marning to ye. Father Hugh. 

Priest. Who lives here? 

Inmate. Pat O'Connor, yer reverence. 

Priest. Ktq. ye on the relief works now? 
{Silence.) Yes: ye are. How long do ye 
work? {Silence; then in an audible aside:) 
Ah, he's dazed with trouble. What time do 
ye go to work ? 

Inmate. Eight o'clock, yer reverence. 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 255 

Priest. Right ; eight o'clock. And when 
do ye lave off? (Silence.) When do ye 

lave off, I say? Foi 

Inmate (hastily). Foive, yer reverence. 
Priest. Yes, foive; it's too long. 
Or else a dialogue like this : — 

Peasant. Can ye tell me now, yer rever- 
ence, why they won't take me on for the 
relafe ? 

Priest. How many of a family have ye? 
Peasant. Four. 
Priest. Four children? 
Peasant. No; one child and my mother 
and myself and my wife. 

Priest. Have ye a cow now? 
Peasant. Yes, yer reverence ; an old cow, 
maybe twelve or thirteen years old. 

Priest. Ah, then, it's that old cow has 

done ye. No; I can't help ye. God knows 

how ye'll do for a living. 

Thus was I dialogued at by the space of half an 

hour or more. But through all the hints and asides 

and by-play I observed one or two facts. First, 

I saw not a single cottage without stock of some 

sort or other; not one without poultry, not one 

without a pig, not very many without presumptive 

evidence of a cow in the shape of its bed, or, more 

conclusive, its calf. Secondly, they ostentatiously 

displayed the poverty of their outer rooms, but 

drew no attention to their inner, in which they are 

wont to keep their best clothes and the like. 



256 THINGS SEEN 

Thirdly, with the exception of a few men who had 
gone out to fish, not a single man in the village was 
working. 

As we went down again to the bay we met the 
fishermen coming up. "What fish did ye catch?" 
asked Father Hugh. "None, your reverence," came 
the glib reply. The speaker passed up ; just behind 
him followed a couple of men, of whom the second 
bore two large shining fish in his hands ; after 
them came a donkey whose panniers looked as if 
they contained more. 

That struck me as very like Rathlathan — and 
presumably like the alleged famine as a whole. The 
truth is bad enough. But the natural sympathy 
for bad luck and indigence is too likely to be for- 
feited by mendicancy and exaggeration. 

III. 

"Now, did ye expect to find a place like this in 
Foxford?" asked the Mother Superior. 

She sat among rolls of tweed and flannel in the 
little office of the factory. She was very short and 
small, the Reverend Mother, and I could hardly 
hear her voice for the clatter of the looms. But in 
her face sat capacity, as well as sweetness, and it 
had only needed the most casual glance at the in- 
stitution of which she is head to teach me that here 
was one whose words on the problem of Western 
Ireland should not be allowed to fall to the ground. 

Before the Sisters of Charity set up their convent, 
seven years ago, the Foxford district was among 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 257 

the most miserable in Ireland. Here the soil really 
is wretched beyond exaggeration — stony, boggy, 
light, poor, hopeless. It is subdivided into plots 
seldom larger than four acres, often miserably less, 
and even without potato failures it was difficult 
enough to keep soul and body together on it. The 
men looked east for their bread — working in Eng- 
land at hay and corn harvests to make the rent. 
The girls looked west to the States, and the driblets 
of wages they sent home were often the only barrier 
between their parents and starvation. You would 
have said there was nothing for such a place but 
the most sweeping of remedies — abolition of rent, 
wholesale enlistment, wholesale emigration. 

Now the first thing that greets you is the clash 
and rattle of the wool factory. While members of 
Parliament have been sobbing and blustering about 
Ireland's throttled industries, women have set to 
work to restore them. They buy the peasant's wool 
at the door — naturally it is a far better market than 
he could find elsewhere in out-of-the-world Con- 
naught — and teach his sons and daughters to weave 
it. At the looms I saw only boys and girls, not one 
grown person except the Sister — elderly, quiet, 
spectacled, yet with a purely Irish smile lurking 
somewhere round her lips — who is the manager of 
the factory. To the young people the convent was 
giving the best and the most needful of all good 
gifts — a trade. 

In another room a dozen girls were knitting 
stockings. — by machine, for the Sisters of Charity 



258 THINGS SEEN 

are also women of business. Charity is not so 
very rare in this world, but sensible charity is rare 
enough to command enthusiasm wherever you may 
meet it. 

From the knitting I went to the school — such a 
schoolroom as made you long to be young again, 
all glass and light, and air, and outside the green 
sunshiny hills and the rushing torrent of the river 
Moy. That river, I should have told you, turns 
every wheel in the factory ; and observe once more 
that, while men were crying out upon the waste of 
Mayo's splendid water-power, women turned to and 
made use of it. 

The next thing was the dairy, then the kitchen, 
then the laundry. All these are departments of 
instruction. The dairy, of course, buys its milk in 
the districts ; so that here, again, the Sisters both 
furnish a market and teach a trade. Likewise there 
is a poultry-rearing school, and I was rejoiced to 
find the Reverend Mother agree that for an all- 
round hardy fowl there is nothing like the Ply- 
mouth Rock. From the villages in the convent's 
sphere of influence — it extends five miles every way, 
which makes nearly 100 square miles in all — the 
Sisters collect and sell eggs ; they go to Dublin, and 
the peasantry get the full price for them, only de- 
ducting carriage. That, you will see, they could not 
possibly hope to get anywhere else. 

But the factory, and the school, and the dairy 
class, and the laundry class, and all the others, are 
only the beginning of the Sisters' work. For five 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 259 

miles on every side they take the place of landlord 
and poor-law guardians, and sanitary board, and 
school board, and charity organisation society, and 
every other function that is likely to do their people 
good. The landlord lives away in England ; it is the 
Sisters who institute poultry shows and stimulate 
vegetable-growing, and teach the value of a nurs- 
ing-crop sown with their oats. It is they who have 
lured the peasants to clear out the century-old 
manure-pits, which lay breeding disease at the door 
of every hut, and to put their refuse on the land 
instead. They have given doors that will keep air 
out and windows that will let air in. They have 
even succeeded here and there in establishing the 
pig outside the house, instead of in — just as easy, 
and healthier for pig and people, after once the 
Irishman sees a reason to do it. 

"We do it," says the Reverend Mother, with her 
unspeakably sweet and humorous smile, "by prizes. 
When friends send us seeds, the people all want to 
be in at the divide, as they call it. But we only 
give them to those who have cleared away their 
manure-pits, and they come to know it. Then we 
give them new doors and windows for prizes if they 
keep their cabins clean. I remember in 1890, at 
the convent where I then was, we had a lot of 
money sent us to distribute ; and it demoralised the 
people so dreadfully, I made up my mind they 
ought never to be given anything for nothing 
again." 

In their own district the management of the relief- 



26o THINGS SEEN 

works has been almost entirely undertaken by the 
Sisters. When I drove out with the steward of the 
convent's good works, or whatever I should call 
the man who is the Superior's representative in 
managing the people, I saw the entirely wise and 
practical form which the relief had taken. Off the 
main road, again and again, I saw new roads run- 
ning to where you could see thatches rising over 
the confused boulders. All these are new made 
this year, and all lead to villages where before noth- 
ing on wheels could ever come. Where before a 
donkey with panniers could hardly go, you could 
now, with care, drive a coach and four. Twenty- 
three such roads in all have been blasted and 
metalled and rolled by the people they are to bring 
into Hving louch with the outside world. 

We landed in one of the poorest villages — Kil- 
more was its name. The land was miserable and 
the holdings small ; but, by comparison, the place 
was clean and well kept. Here you saw a pink 
new door, there a large window with a sash. One 
house had a new chimney, another a newly-repaired 
roof. 

But there was a reverse side to it all. The mo- 
ment we set foot in the village the inhabitants all 
crowded up to beg for more. It was painfully 
evident that Irish mendicancy grows by feeding. 
"Now, Mr. M'Carthy, when are ye going to bring 
us a new dure? Look at it, now." "Mr. M'Carthy, 
could ye not lend me a wheel-barrow ? I've cleared 
my manure-pit, and I want to make a little grass- 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 261 

plot." "Mr. M'Carthy, I got no oats at the divide, 
only ryegrass ; could ye not let me have some oats ? 
I'm an old woman, all alone; who's going to help 



me: 



?" 



The more they had, the more they wanted. With 
them it was not relief from hunger — that they had 
already ; it was anything they could get. As usual, 
not a man in the village was at work ; they were 
just smoking. The cHmax came with the most 
prosperous inhabitant of the village. He had a cow 
and calf, pig, ducks, fowls, and a small garden ; he 
was a young, able-bodied man, and about to leave 
to work in England. But he begged most sturdily 
for a gate for his garden. It was walled, like all 
gardens there, with stones, which are only too 
abundant. But he complained that the donkeys 
pushed the wall down. 

"Then why don't you build it stronger?" I asked; 
"there are lots of stones." 

"Then how will I get through to it myself?" 

"Make a stile to get over." 

"No; Mr. M'Carthy, ye must send me a gate be- 
fore I go to England, and a man to put it up." 

In two hours he could have made himself a per- 
fectly good wall and stile. But he preferred to beg 
for a gate and a man to put it up. 

I asked the steward why the old woman, who 
was quite alone, and could not possibly be expected 
to keep herself except by begging, did not go into 
the workhouse, "Ah," he said, "they find it very 
difficult to o-o into the workhouse." 



262 THINGS SEEN 

So do better men and women in my country, I 
told him. If you are to have, and pay for, work- 
houses at all, this woman was plainly a case for 
one. Only to the Irish mind it is quite a sufficient 
answer that "they find it very difficult." They 
mustn't be asked to do anything they find difficult. 



IV. 



I didn't find it. To be sure, I only visited a small 
corner of the counties where it is supposed to be. 
But as that comer was the one whence the loudest 
cries of distress had come, I think we may assume 
that there is no famine in Ireland at all. There is 
considerable distress ; but it has been considerably 
exaggerated, partly for political purposes, partly 
from Celtic hysteria; and the measures taken to 
relieve this season's exceptional poverty are, and 
will be, adequate. 

In saying this I do not mean that the conditions 
of life among the Mayo peasantry are such as they 
should be. They are obviously not. When you 
find a population in the condition, and content with 
the condition, of outside paupers, it is plain that 
there is something very wrong somewhere. Prob- 
ably the blame lies pretty equally on everybody 
concerned. I do not wish to alarm anybody by 
anarchistic opinions ; but I think a landlord who 
draws rent from the land and makes it no return, 
in the shape of residence and intelligent supervision 
of his tenants, is little better than a robber. I think 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 263 

a political leader who discourages his followers from 
self-help, or from making an honest livings as sol- 
diers or constables, is little better than a traitor to 
them. And I think a peasant who whines for char- 
ity with his hands in his pockets and a pipe in his 
mouth is little better than a criminal. 

Of course, you blame the peasant least. The 
rent and the subdivision of the land are a terrible 
handicap on his industry ; he has neither the knowl- 
edge nor the capital to substitute other industries 
for his primitive tillage; his ignorance puts him in 
the hands of leaders who hardly seem to go the 
directest way to give him practical and permanent 
help ; he himself is dazed and sodden by many gen- 
erations of hopeless poverty. And then he is Celt. 
You do not find him at work ; he says there is noth- 
ing to do. Give an Englishman or a Scotsman 
four acres to himself, and see if he finds nothing 
to do. 

However, I am not here to write essays on Irish 
land, or Irish politics, or the Irish character : the 
question for the moment is the distress and the re- 
lief. But for the exceptional help rendered I think 
there would have been real starvation. But in 
saying that the present relief, if continued, is ade- 
quate, I do not go at all on my own observation 
only. I take the priest of Rathlathan, who says 
his people will pull through till the new potato crop 
is dug ; I take the Sisters of Foxford, who have sur- 
mounted the danger of present hunger, and are 
working on, most laudably, with their efforts for 



264 THINGS SEEN 

permanent amelioration. I take the opinion of a 
minister of religion, not Catholic who, while fully 
alive to the hardships of his flock, told me plainly : 
"There's nothing that you could call famine ; there 
does be great poverty, but there does be exaggera- 
tion." 

These being the opinions of people all naturally 
tending to overstate rather than understate the 
necessities of the people, we may take it for certain 
that this year's crisis is tided over. I shall not trou- 
ble you, therefore, with the lengthy criticisms I 
heard about the manner of distributing relief, 
though these might be borne in mind in view of an- 
other bad potato crop. It was said, and I should 
say plausibly, that it is a great mistake to intrust 
relief works either to boards of guardians or any 
other local agency. You will never get justice done 
thus, I was told, not once nor twice, since every- 
body has favourites; the really needy are left out, 
and some are taken on who could struggle along 
without. To my mind the Irish peasant appeared 
to look on relief works less as a last defence against 
starvation than as a natural right of man — which 
they obviously ought not to be. And one of my 
informants — a Catholic and a Nationalist all right 
— took my breath away by regretting the days when 
such public doles had been superintended by the 
R.E. or the police. 

Of course the country was vocal with criticisms 
about the works selected for public employment. 
Some of these — the pier for fishing-boats opposite 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 265 

Rathlathan or the roads to the sequestered villages 
about Foxford — ^were of plain and urgent public 
utility. On the other hand, some people com- 
plained that work was put on to entirely useless 
accommodation roads, and held it would have been 
far better to pay 3s. a week instead of 6s. and let 
men work on their own holdings. Very likely it 
would ; only I doubt whether they would work, and, 
moreover, such employment would be useless un- 
less accompanied by some independent and trust- 
worthy criterion of destitution. It appears essential 
that public employment ought only to be given in 
the last resort ; the Mayo peasantry are quite pau- 
perised enough already. 

One suggestion favoured a light railway from 
Killala to Ballycastle, if not along the whole of the 
northern Mayo coast up to Belmullet. That, no 
doubt, would be an ideal pubhc employment, and 
would bring some of the most beautiful scenery in 
the world into touch with such tourists as are 
neither very leisured nor very moneyed. There is, 
also, at least one flagstone quarry which could be 
profitably worked with the aid of such a line, and it 
would, of course, open up the country generally. I 
am afraid there is only the poorest chance of such a 
railway making its expenses for a very long time. 
But as an investment in national prosperity it should 
bring in its return from the first. 

These are points which might come useful in the 
event of another shortage; but, of course, any 
remedy, to be practical, ought to aim at prevention. 



266 THINGS SEEN 

Of such there are dozens in the air, from land 
nationaUsation downwards. It might be doubted 
v;hether the Irish peasant is the ideal small pro- 
prietor, but in any case we will leave that question 
for politicians. In the meantime, two immediate 
reforms are being pursued : the obliteration of 
potato disease by chemicals, and the cultivation of 
many crops instead of one. 

The sprayer was first used, I believe, in France 
against phylloxera in vineyards. Some years ago it 
was introduced into the West of Ireland. It is an 
easily handled machine, which distributes over a 
crop of potatoes a solution of blue-stone (sulphate 
of copper). The first landlord who introduced it 
in the Ballina district grew two parallel patches ; 
one he sprayed and the other he neglected, and he 
encouraged his tenants and poor neighbours to 
watch the result. The one gave a good and healthy 
crop ; the other was destroyed by blight. 

Need it be said that the peasantry at first re- 
garded the sprayer with profound distrust and aver- 
sion? But the present stress has thrown everybody 
back on it ; you will find everybody now most anx- 
ious to use the sprayer, and most confident as to its 
ability to stamp out blight utterly in four years. 
There is much reason to believe this true. 

Now a sprayer costs about 25s., and the ordinary 
Irish small-holder is not in a position to buy one. 
Several might combine ; but, of course, the sulphate 
of copper has to be applied in dry weather, lest it be 
unprofitably washed off again. There are not too 



IN SEARCH OF A FAMINE 267 

many ary clays a season in county Mayo, and that 
puts a limit on the common ownership of sprayers. 
The Mansion House Fund has given a certain num- 
ber; in theory these are to be used only for the 
potatoes presented by the fund, but to expect that 
is hardly to allow for human nature. All authorities 
agree that more sprayers are wanted, and I can 
hardly conceive a fitter form for charity to take. 

As for diversity of crops, a good deal has been 
done by the Dublin Fund, by private friends of the 
Foxford Convent, and similar agencies. The 
peasantry eat little oatmeal, and depend, beyond 
potatoes, mainly on Indian meal imported from 
America ; at present they are rewarded for this by 
having to pay prices almost doubled. Now most 
of the holders have received presents of seed oats, 
rye, ryegrass, and — at anyrate in the Foxford 
sphere — vegetable seeds. The use of oatmeal 
would be a great step in advance ; the growth of 
vegetables might become almost as useful a stand- 
by as poultry-keeping, which, at the rate of 5s. per 
100 eggs bartered for food in the shops, is keeping 
many a peasant's home somehow going at this 
moment. 

But when all is said and done, you still have the 
Irish peasant to deal with — the most adorable and 
the most impossible person in the world. You can 
give him a sprayer, but will he use it? You can 
give him seed, but will he grow it ? And if he does, 
won't he do his very utmost to pretend that he is 
just as badly off as ever? You would say that he 



268 THINGS SEEN 

likes to be poor ; he likes to be a beggar ; he prefers 
being dirty, and keeps the pig in the house at the 
imminent risk of his health. The truth is that he 
is a child, and he cannot do without a parent or 
guardian. He wants a guardian who understands 
him, who will not be sternly unsympathetic, as an 
Englishman would usually be, nor yet softly in- 
dulgent, as an Irishman of his own class would be. 
When you see such tutelage existing — as at Fox- 
ford, though with perhaps an inclination to cocker- 
ing — you see that it is just possible, with toil and 
curses, to do something with the Irish after all. 
The natural person to have taken him in hand was 
his landlord. Only, where is he? In his absence 
comes the member of Parliament, and then begins 
the Irish question. 



"DURING HER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE."^ 

I. 

"There isn't a strait-Jacket in the place, nor a 
padded room," said the superintendent. I gave a 
gasp of amazement. Six or seven hundred criminal 
lunatics, and not a strait-jacket among them ! But 
it was I who was absurd. I had a foolish idea that 
a lunatic is always in a state of acute mania — always 
screaming and shaking bars. As a matter of fact, 
I heard not a single scream in Broadmoor. Mad- 
ness or sanity, as the superintendent said, is a ques- 
tion of degree. It may be impossible to treat a 
man as sane, and yet equally impossible for a casual 
acquaintance to say that he is mad. 

All the restraint at Broadmoor is exerted by 
hand, by human, not mechanical, power. It is a 
most rigid rule that no attendant may lay single 
hands even on the most violent patient ; he must 
blow his whistle for aid. When three or more men 
approach him, even a maniac is usually sane enough 
not to struggle. But if he does, then he has over- 
whelming force against him, and is the less likely to 
be hurt. 

That was the first misapprehension bowled over 
by a visit to Broadmoor; there were others to fol- 

• Daily Mail. November 1897. 
269 



270 THINGS SEEN 

low. I was taken out on to the terraced garden ; the 
asylum stands on a hill, and if the high red walls 
give the first impression of a prison, the noble pros- 
pect over miles of fir-clothed hill, the gauzy curtain 
of distant mist, the clearer blue sky, and the clearer 
air that you only find in hilly, sandy, heather-and- 
fir-tree country, — these are the next best thing to 
freedom. The tiers of garden were marked out into 
little plots ; each, I heard with new am.azement, is 
the private garden of an inmate. It is not the best 
time of year to see gardens, but they were full of 
strawberry plants, carnations, winter vegetables, 
even fruit-trees. I was not surprised to hear that 
the small cultivators grow most prodigious crops to 
the square yard. A man must needs love his gar- 
den when it is all he has in the world. 

But I was once more surprised to hear that they 
buy their own manure. An inmate who works — on 
his garden, at tailoring, boot-making, mattress- 
making — gets one-eighth of the product of his 
labour for himself, and, within obvious limits, he 
can do what he likes with it. If he has a private 
income he can get a proportion of it to spend. He 
can order his own clothes from the village tailor; 
he can order a brace of birds for his dinner ; he can 
send presents to his friends. Only the most pre- 
cious, and surely the most pathetic, present of all, 
is the basket of strawberries or box of pears, grown 
on his own plot by his own labour, that a working 
man will send somewhere out into the world to his 
wife. 



"DURING ITER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE" 271 

When I came to see the inmates I perceived that 
Broadmoor is not a prison. It is a huge mental 
hospital, and the principal thing used in it is healthy 
occupation. You can gauge a man's mental health 
almost exactly by the degree in which he notices 
his fellows. A man who is very ill stands and walks 
among his companions all day ; he sees them and 
hears them with eye and ear. But in his mind he 
is quite alone, a hermit dwelling v«'ith his own de- 
lusions. When a man is better he will make ac- 
quaintances and friends ; he will begin to interest 
himself in his work or his play. And the more he 
interests himself in things not himself, the better he 
becomes. 

As this was expounded to me we passed by the 
lawn-tennis court. Two gentlemen who had mur- 
dered were playing two gentlemen who had at- 
tempted murder. Inside the block where these live 
tea was being got ready — not at one long table, but 
at many short ones ; the sun slanted on to the 
grained wood-work, and the fire crackled cheerily. 
We passed the row of little bedrooms ; you cannot 
call them cells, for the inmates use them only at 
night : a glazed slit by the door, through which the 
attendant on night duty can flash his lantern on to 
the pillow, is the only suggestion of captivity. One 
room was being put in order — not by the owner, but 
by a poorer patient, his servant. Then we came into 
the day-room ; it looked exceedingly like the smok- 
ing-room of an unpretentious but comfortable hotel. 
Men lounged about on benches in the sun, or in 



2/2 THINGS SEEN 

armchairs before the fire. Most of these were grey- 
bearded ; the younger men were out of doors, but 
exercise, Hke work, is recommended by persuasion 
rather than enforced. 

Here were books and newspapers in abundance — 
chess, draughts, cards, and a bilHard-table. Here 
was a quiet, trim, scholarly-looking man who had 
pushed his wife over a cliff; there a rougher, 
ragged-bearded elder who had throttled his senior 
partner; there, reading the 'Daily Mail,' a mild- 
eyed visionary whose mission in life is to kill a 
royal person. They exchanged courteous "Good 
afternoons" with the doctor ; of the stranger they 
took no more heed than one would of a visitor in a 
club. And the couple of dark-blue attendants, 
standing quiet, decorous, tactful, but vigilant in the 
midst of a dozen madmen, might almost have been 
club servants. 

But there is another side to Broadmoor. These 
were the first-class patients in both senses — the best 
mentally and socially. In another block we come 
into a long passage which opened through barred 
windows on to a courtyard. It was full of men and 
keepers — the men in white trousers and long grey 
sleeveless cloaks. Some walked swiftly to and fro, 
as if bent on important business ; others stood stock- 
still, as if they had forgotten their own existence ; 
all alike looked straight out of their eyes, yet 
seemed to see no one and nothing. Only one man 
noticed the doctors and me : he came up and looked 
me in the face with unwinking eyes, and began to 



"DURING HER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE" 273 

Speak. He spoke on and on, without pause and 
without modulation ; his speech was educated ; he 
spoke of volts and elHptical orbits, and of myste- 
rious being's from Camden, New Jersey, who had 
murdered his father with Rontgen rays. He was 
abreast of every movement in physical science up 
to yesterday's 'Times,' and he was there from a 
county asylum for killing the doctor with a stone in 
a pocket-handkerchief. 

From the next court a crowd swarmed up at the 
view of a strange face like moths round a lamp. 
Trembling figures handed up letters on to the sill 
for approval — pitiful little scrawls on blue paper 
addressed to the Queen, to judges, to the dead, to 
the Almighty. A score of fixed, unexpressive eyes 
met mine ; a dozen chanting voices rose up together. 
All spoke with a set, formal utterance, as if of a 
rehearsed speech. One doomed superintendent, 
and doctors, and keepers for a set of murderous 
liars. Another besought them abjectly not to run 
needles into his eyes. A pair of pale-blue eyes met 
mine out of the face of a St. John: "My name is T. 
Perkins, and I have been murdered here, by those 
that know not what they do, because they have 
ether in their heads, for Christ's sake." As we 
turned to go there came a hoarse whisper from a 
burly black-browed man : 'T give you warning, he 
has condemned us all to death, you and me and all 
of us ; but who he is I am not allowed to say, though 
there are descendants of his not a hundred miles 
away." Then he called me back : "Give him the 



274 THINGS SEEN 

message, sir, and the token is" — he bared empty 
gums — "the man has lost his teeth." And the last 
impression of all was the empty blue eyes of T. 
Perkins as he followed us from window to window 
and chanted "Rock of Ages." 

The women's side was much quieter — a series of 
airy rooms with shawled figures knitting round the 
fire, or white-haired dames dropping pretty little 
curtseys and promising gifts of kittens. Many had 
decorated their rooms with little boxes, and flowers, 
and cards, and pictures on the wall. They have 
their laundry and their ballroom ; nearly all were 
very peaceful and contented. Yet there were two 
or three not less pathetic than the men — the new 
inmate who feigned to be occupied with her bed 
lest a stranger should notice her, the idiot wench 
who stood grinning, opening and shutting her 
hands, the old woman who pleaded hard to be al- 
lowed to go to the annual entertainment — "because 
I've not been now, doctor, for so very many years." 

When we came out the sun was sloping down to 
the fir-woods, and it was getting cold. The men 
were at work on their gardens ; one had had in half 
a load of smoking manure, and, with a friend, was 
doing all he knew to get it wheeled out before dark. 
In the dusk it might have been an allotment field. 
But my mind dwelt on another glimpse I had had 
of the bad court from above. One old man, with 
floating grey beard, was walking about playing on a 
child's fiddle. Another, very old and with the tooth- 
less brainless grin of a baby, was walking swiftly 



"DURING HER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE" 275 

to and fro making' with his hands the motion of a 
juggler playing with knives. Another — he, too, 
grey-headed — had put on a red handkerchief Uke an 
apron ; he stood facing a dead wall, and at regular 
intervals he gave a little skip like a girl about to 
slide. A pause, a skip ; a pause, a skip — without 
rest and without variation. And not one out of 
half a hundred took any heed of any other. 



II. 



Under a dead sky and a sullen fog, which the 
thin biting wind could not dispel. Wormwood 
Scrubs raised its cluster of towers and chimneys 
with rather a forced and elaborate cheerfulness. 
The outline is more broken and more decorative 
than you would expect in a prison ; it looks as if it 
were trying to make-believe that it is something 
more cheerful. But when you get nearer, walking 
through the wilderness of football-grounds, which 
is the only other feature of the landscape, the domi- 
nant impression is the lower and outside walls — 
high, hard, and bare, they make a grim enough 
contrast to the well-meaning ornament above. 

A quarter of a mile from the gate three prisoners 
were mending the road — one old man and two mid- 
dle-aged. Their clothes were yellow — the yellow of 
sackcloth^ — sprigged with a broad-arrow here and 
there. Their caps, a kind of cross between a pastry- 
cook's and a Glengarry, bore a red star. To the 
three prisoners there were two warders : unostenta- 



2'j(i THINGS SEEN 

tiously, but surely, they followed each movement 
with the pick or shovel, and never seemed to leave 
a couple of yards between themselves and their 
men. 

The front of the prison is the warders' quarters — 
pleasant enough, with creepers hanging down over 
the windows, and children's faces looking through. 
Here a couple more prisoners were nailing up the 
creepers, with again a warder's eye on every move- 
ment and a second following them at a distance. 
To get into the prison is only one degree less diffi- 
cult than to get out. You can ring at the bell easily 
enough, and the door opens ; then you find yourself 
under an arch, a sort of lodge on one side and a 
heavily-barred gate blocking it at the inner end. 
Through the bars there faces you the white chapel, 
— I have seen many far more forbidding and far less 
graceful. In front of it another sackcloth figure 
was weeding the gravel walk, with yet another 
warder standing over him about six inches dis- 
tant. At this point you must show your credentials, 
and thenceforth the little paper from the Home 
Office will never leave the hand of the officer who 
takes charge of you. And in the room where you 
wait awhile, along with plans and regulations on the 
wall, the eye falls particularly on a list — "Twelve 
revolvers, three ditto, twelve carbines, ammunition," 
and the like. 

Up to now the impression of Her Majesty's prison 
is stark enough. But when you find yourself in 
charge of an officer — spectacled, courteous, intelli- 



"DURING HER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE" ^'JJ 

gent, with nothing of the jailor about him but the 
chain at his belt, of which the other end is a key 
— and when you begin to go round department after 
department, the first impression is washed out al- 
most entirely. You never supposed that a prison 
would be light and airy, healthy and even cheerful? 
Well, Wormwood Scrubs is all of these. You go into 
the first hall, and in a moment you might be in a 
model lodging-house, only cleaner, better kept, with 
more industrious inhabitants. It is a long, narrow, 
lofty court, four-storeyed ; glass skylights at the top 
and feathery iron rails and staircases fill you with a 
sense of light and air. On this nipping day it is 
quite warm. On either side rise up the tiers of 
cells. Warders and prisoners are standing about 
on the floor working, but here the warders seem 
less like slave-drivers, as they did outside, than in- 
telligent foremen directing willing hands. 

You go into a cell. The prisoner has cleansed it 
himself, and it is spotless. His floor is like the 
deck of a man-of-war, and you never saw better 
polished tin in a tinsmith's than his drinking-cup, 
washing-bowl, and other vessels. It is not large, 
but it is lofty for its size ; two ventilators let air 
in and out, and a grating lets in heat. Against the 
wall leans the man's bed — deal planks raised a few 
inches above the floor with a rough mattress, per- 
haps three inches thick, and half-a-dozen blankets. 
This man is getting to the end of his time. At first 
there is no mattress, and certainly the planks are 
hard — only there are many thousands of honest 



278 THINGS SEEN 

men in this country who have slept as hard for 
weeks together, and not near so clean. The other 
furniture is a small table, coming out bracket-wise 
from the wall, and a small wooden stool. On a 
shelf in the corner are the man's books : every 
prisoner can have out one library book at a time, 
and devotional books besides ; this prisoner is a 
Jew, and has half-a-dozen, English and Hebrew. 
And finally — imagine it, O law-abiding citizen ! — 
there is an electric bell. When the criminal wants 
attention he presses the button ; his number appears 
outside on a bracket, and the warder answers his 
bell. 

As you pass from one part of the prison to an- 
other you notice that most of the doors are not 
solid, but of open iron bars : it maintains the sense 
of air, and almost gives the He to the word confine- 
ment. You go into the tailoring shop, the boot 
shop, the smiths' shop, the carpenters' shop. The 
workshops in Portsmouth Dockyard are not half so 
comfortable and healthy. Here is the bakery, with 
convicts kneading dough ; here the kitchen, with 
a law-breaker making a rice-pudding for a sick 
fellow. Others are at work on navy hammocks. 
Post Office bags, coal-bags for Her Majesty's fleet. 
The work of the prison is wholly done inside itself 
by its own labour; but nothing is sent out except 
for government departments, — no competition with 
honest trade. Every man is set to his own trade : if 
he knows none, he can get the chance to learn. 

The chapel is as free and graceful inside as out- 



"DURING HER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE" 279 

side. The floor of it is sunk ; women sit in front, 
and then behind them is a screen, just so high that 
the men can see the pulpit without being able to 
see the women. There is a little font — "We use it 
sometimes, even here," says my officer, with pride. 
The chapel is being redecorated — of course by 
prisoners ; they work as cheerfully and as well as 
everybody else, here. The hospital is like every- 
thing else — a model of neatness, cleanliness, and 
order. There is no suspicion of overcrowding, and 
the half-dozen men sitting about the ward — nobody 
is very ill — can hardly have seen such comfortable 
quarters in their lives before. Only a pace or two 
down the next corridor a round-faced, open-eyed 
boy — how came he into the sackcloth livery? — is 
looking intently through a grating. And inside 
there paces restlessly and incessantly round and 
round the cell a man, who seems to have no arms 
— his jacket comes tight down outside them, and 
pins them to his side. He has a mild, fair-bearded 
face, but his gentle eyes look at you without seeing 
you — he has attempted suicide four times. 

There are at work here the two guiding principles 
of modern criminology — the differentiation of pris- 
oners and the abolition of useless work. As the 
convicts march round and round the oval exercise- 
grounds you notice that some bear red stars on cap 
and tunic : these are first offenders. And the con- 
victs proper — the penal servitude men, that is — 
exercise by themselves. They alone wear knicker- 
bockers and stockings; they alone are shaved. I 



28o THINGS SEEN 

only looked in at their yard for a moment, but there 
seemed a sullen desperation on their coarse faces 
that made the short-sentence men look very happy. 
Another point of difiference is that a man is more 
and more leniently treated as he draws to the end of 
his time. As for useless work, oakum, for which 
there is no longer any commercial demand to speak 
of, has almost entirely disappeared from the Scrubs. 
At the beginning of a man's term he is put in a cell 
with a crank to turn; it is like a chafif-cutter, only 
rather heavier to handle : certainly 10,000 revolu- 
tions is a good, though far from excessive, day's 
work. Short of this, all labour has its definite, com- 
prehensible end. And especially by doing the work 
of the prison — their own work, that is — are the in- 
mates trained to understand the necessity and dig- 
nity of labour and allowed to take an interest in it. 

Then, why not all be convicts? To be cockered 
in a model lodging-house, dry, warm, well-fed, well- 
trained physically, with a book from the circulating 
library — the wonder is that our poor do not contrive 
to spend all their lives in quarters so attractive. The 
cell for the violent is perfectly comfortable, except 
that it has no furniture to smash ; the dark cell is 
not dark ; the very cat is a puny little whip, and can 
only be given on a magistrate's order at that. Why 
not all seek Her Majesty's hospitality at the sign of 
the Scrubs? 

Well — the doors. That is the only thing against 
it. The whole place is a chess-board of doors — and 
every door is locked. There is the chain at every 



"DURING HER MAJESTY'S PLEASURE" 281 

warder's belt, and the clash of the turning key every 
ten yards of your journey. Bars that you can see 
through are very well — only when you can't go 
through it would be almost better not to see. A 
well-regulated life is the only happy one — only you 
would sooner regulate it for yourself. The clash of 
the locks takes root in your ears before you have 
gone half round. And it is worth going out again 
out of the warmth and light into the fog and ice- 
edged wind again for the pleasure of hearing the last 
clang and clatter behind, and not in front of you. 



IN THE COUNTRY OF THE STORM.^ 

For the first moment Ingatestone seemed just like 
all othei Essex stations along the line from London. 
Coal-trucks on the siding, meadows and trees, a 
governess-car with a parson in a muffler, and a girl 
in shirt and sailor hat — it was just the ordinary 
English country station. And yet there was some- 
thing queer about it — something that ought not to 
be. What was it? 

There seemed to be a suggestion of November 
somehow in the midsummer luxuriance. What 
could it be? The trees! Yes; what was wrong 
with the trees ? They were all leafless, or next thing 
to it. They looked as if they had been very badly 
blighted, or else, as I say, as if November had some- 
how suddenly intruded upon midsummer. They 
were leafless, yellow, with branches broken down, 
and with dead leaves blown into heaps by the road- 
side. That unearthly sight in the middle of a shin- 
ing July day — that was the footprint of the great 
storm. 

Jogging along in a dogcart behind a sleepy brown 
mare, and beside a sleepy brown inhabitant, I began 
to make inquiries about it. It must have been one 
of the most astounding calamities that ever fell 
without warning on a quiet village. He supposed 

^ Daily Mail, July 7, 1897. 
283 



IN THE COUNTRY OF THE STORM 283 

it were ; but he hadn't seen it himself. He was at 
Great Something, nine miles away, and he hadn't 
seen a trace of it. At Little Something, a mile 
nearer, they had had very heavy rain, but no hail. 
Where we were going to they had had the hail. 
We should soon come to a farm where a tree had 
come down through the roof into the farmer's bed- 
room. "A hard-working man he is, too," and I 
recognised him from the description as the hero of 
many newspaper articles already. 

Certainly we were coming to where they had had 
the hail. On the near side of the road was a thick 
grove of trees — oaks, elms, Scotch firs, every sort. 
They had had the wind unquestionably : here was 
a branch snapped ofif clean, here another torn pain- 
fully from the tough trunk and swinging from a 
gaping white wound, there was a tree ripped up by 
the roots and flung into the hedge. But it was not 
these wind-wounds that gave the air of chilly deso- 
lation to the whole country. It was the leaves sliced 
off as with a storm of bullets — the naked trees un- 
der the brilliant sun, the litter of leaves beneath 
them four months before their time. Summer had 
suddenly departed from this country, and I shiv- 
ered. 

Perhaps that was sentimental. But when we 
came to the land of the hard-working man there 
was a deal more than sentiment to turn the heart 
cold. The accommodation road w^as so barricaded 
with fallen branches that we had to drive across the 
pastures. We came to the farmhouse. On one side 



284 THINGS SEEN 

of it every pane of glass was smashed in. The 
barn had lost every tile ; its roof was only a cobweb 
of broken lattices, and the fragments of the broken 
tiles were heaped up like old crockery all round it. 
The house itself was almost as naked, and its back 
was broken where the tree had come down on it. 
On the right were two fields. One had been full of 
beans and the other of corn, but to-day the beans 
were a fallow and the corn was stubble. 

In another field a torn disconsolate potato raised 
its head here and there out of the ruin. But where 
there had been mangold there was nothing — simplv 
nothing at all. You could just trace the lines of the 
furrows, washed almost level by the rain. But for 
any trace of a crop, the field might never have been 
touched since last Michaelmas. It goes without 
saying that the hard-working farmer is quite ruined. 

As we jogged on it became apparent that fallen 
trees had been sawn into lengths and cleared off the 
road ; otherwise we should never have been able to 
drive along the road at all. Whenever we turned a 
corner a new bit of destruction came in sight. 
Some of the windows had been put in again, others 
were still staring empty. It had been a good time, 
remarked my friend, with a resolute effort to look 
on the bright side of things, for the glaziers. Day 
and night, Sunday and week-day, they had had as 
much work as they cared to lay putty to. But 
despite that cheering fact, the drive got glummer 
and glummer. Tiles, thatch, or slates, every roof 
seemed to have fared the same. Fences sprawled 



IN THE COUNTRY OF THE STORM 285 

all over the road, and the nettles were cut down as 
with a scythe. Here was a yawning gap in a fence ; 
here a rough sheep-hurdle stufifed in to make a 
provisional join where a big elm had smashed the 
elegant railing. Fowls and ducks, pheasants and 
partridges, were dead by the score. Every bit of 
glass was ground to powder, of course ; every bit 
of growth under it bruised to pulp. The Ingate- 
stone Show was just coming on, and very many 
people were growing something for it under glass 
— something they had taken trouble with, going in 
to the little hothouse every hour to see how it was 
getting on. There will be no show at Ingatestone 
this season. 

Where there had been hay ready for cutting 
there was now only rather ragged pasture, that 
looked as if it had not been properly beaten down. 
It was useless to try to cut the remnants with the 
machine, though here and there they were trying 
to save a little with the scythe. But it was heart- 
breaking work — ^just a few wisps of grass here and 
there mixed with a good many weeds ; the only 
thing that had quite resisted the storm was the 
thistles. The corn was beyond even this piteous 
consolation. The hail had cut it off short at the 
ground ; it was not possible to save even the straw. 
As for the roots, it was usually quite impossible to 
guess even what they had been. 

Still, here and there, and almost everywhere amid 
the wicked ravages of Nature, you could see in- 
domitable man at work again. 



286 THINGS SEEN 

They were beginning already to do what could be 
done. At a gentleman's house they were hoisting 
up bricks and tiles to the roof. As I w-atched, a 
landau and pair came along the road. A big-nosed 
old lady was looking at the damage through a pair 
of lorgnettes ; the carriage stopped, and a footman 
went in with a card : how sweet a thing is sympathy 
in the hour of adversity. More congenial was a 
farmhouse whose lacerated roof had been recently 
wrapped in rick-covers ; the white-haired farmer 
and his three men were hoeing away at what little 
was left of the mangolds, as if they gave every 
promise of a record crop and a fat year with the 
rent paid and something put away in the bank. And 
there was a little old lady driving a fat old cob in 
an old park phaeton. A tree had come down over 
her fence a yard behind her as she passed by ; yet 
here she was, driving alone, and flicking up the cob 
along the drive home as full of courage and char- 
acter as ever. Nature, after all, can make man very 
uncomfortable, but she has never conquered him 
yet. 

All the same, in some places there was nothing 
but evidence of numb despair. "There's an old 
man here ; I don't know how much he didn't reckon 
to make out of his cherries ;" and here was his be- 
loved white-heart agonising over the orchard, 
through the hedge, and smashing its limbs to pieces 
on the hard road. And then, again, "There's a little 
man here ; he'd just set up for himself a little mar- 
ket-garden ; there's his bit of glass." Yes, there 



IN THE COUNTRY OF THE STORM 287 

was his bit of glass — or, rather, there was his not a 
single bit of glass; nothing but twisted frames, and 
below them the clean-stripped stalks of tomatoes. 
The little man had done nothing to put things 
straight, it seemed. For he couldn't bring his 
tomatoes to life again, and how was he ever to start 
for himself anew? 

So we drove till we came out on the southward 
side of Ingatestone. And there everything was as 
usual, everything as it should be. A branch or two 
wrenched off now and again, but not more than you 
might see after many a hard blow. On one side of 
the road wheat, and on the other oats — splendid 
crops, nodding buoyantly to the breeze. Trim 
homesteads, with gardens full of peas and marigolds 
and geraniums. And not half a mile away from it 
that cruel devastation, that massacre of the coun- 
try. One taken and the other left. Plainly it was 
the visitatiori of God — but was it any easier to bear 
for that? 



THE DERBY.i 

On the Epsom road early summer brings a double 
crop. It is not so near the London blights but that 
chestnut and may blossom sweetly above the 
hedges, kingcups in the ditches, and buttercups in 
the meadows. Along with them this season breeds 
products less clean. Between the chestnut-trees, 
above the may, come out festoons of grossly yellow 
and vermilion posters ; among the buttercups on 
the roadside a succession of sleepy tramps readjust 
battered billycocks over their eyes, and heave from 
one elbow on to the other. Then you know that 
summer is come and the Derby is at hand. 

On the Epsom road we associate the Derby with 
a string of raucous brakes in the morning and the 
same hideously vocal returning at night; also with 
entirely supererogatory niggers, who pester us as 
we go back to work in the quiet interval after din- 
ner. As if we had anything to waste on niggers, 
we who try to live on the starveling Epsom road. 
Nevertheless, if we had eyes to spare for it, the days 
before the Derby bring quite a modern exodus in a 
panorama before us. 

The Monday before the Epsom Summer Meeting 
is, as the Calendar will tell you, one of the rare holi- 
days of the fiat-racing season. Yet that day sees 

' Daily Mail, June 1897. 



THE DERBY 289 

a procession from London to the Downs as con- 
tinuous, if not so thick, as that of the Wednesday 
itself. On Monday morning I found one unbroken 
string of vehicles and foot-passengers stretched all 
along the ten miles from Double Gates, Merton, 
which are held to be the end of London, to the 
Grand Stand above Epsom, They had nothing 
directly to do with racing, and they were not mak- 
ing holiday. They were just the parasites — the 
swing-boat people and the Aunt-Sally people, the 
gipsies, the hawkers, and the general cadgers that 
make what you might call the properties of the 
Derby. 

Most of the vehicles were of the house-van kind 
that you all know, though you will not often see so 
many of them together. They seem rarer than they 
used to be, and I should have hardly thought there 
were so many left in England. Yet here they were 
in scores, plodding, plodding southward : on the 
road their .sloping decks and soot-crusted chimneys, 
their dark-green or claret-coloured sides, give them 
something of the air of vessels. This is the ship of 
the road, self-contained and self-sufificient, touching 
here and there for supplies, yet independent of any 
roof or bed or stable, or any other resting-place — 
the true automobile. The sky for your roof-tree 
and the turf for your pillow — how you envy the free 
mariners of the road — until you look at them. Ver- 
minous hair matted over low foreheads and shifting 
eyes, arms that hang forward from loose shoulders 
like an orang-outang's, toeless and heelless boots, 



290 THINGS SEEN 

every man and woman and child in shapeless clothes 
that obviously were made for somebody else — no : 
I would not be a van-dweller after all. 

The van carries its all with it: the smoke from 
the funnel says they are cooking dinner ; lashed to 
a tailboard is the goat that gives the milk for tea; 
hung out in front the caged linnet that furnishes 
the band during meals. Mixed up with these go 
parties who travel much lighter — a coaster-cart, 
laden with what look like bean-sticks and a length 
or two of canvas : that is to make a shelter wherein 
the family will spend the week. Then there are 
those who travel lighter still — the foot-passengers, 
some in droves of men and women together, their 
sole baggage a few ponies, seemingly ignorant of 
the difference between a summer and winter coat; 
some all alone, and with no more baggage than the 
hands in their pockets. They have no trade goods, 
these slouching scarecrows, no accomplishments, 
no qualification at all for work, and no intention 
in the world of doing it. Yet here they are in their 
thousands, shuffling towards the Derby, to beg, to 
borrow, to steal — all drawn by the lodestar of that 
hope of getting money without working for it, 
which is inseparable from the glorious turf. 

You do not fall exactly in love with the British 
turf on the Epsom road the day before the Derby 
meeting. And when you get up on to the Downs 
you love it still less. You see the lower side of it, 
which is to the brilliancy and excitement of the day 
itself as loaded beer is to champagne, or the shaggy 



THE DERBY 2gi 

galumphing gipsy pony to the shining thorough- 
bred. When you get on tO' the Downs you should 
have drawn definitely clear of London and all about 
it. Behind and below you trees and meadows, 
farms and villages, welter in black murk: the filthy 
exhalations of London climb up the sky like a wall. 
Before you stretches of rolling grass dip down to 
hollows, rise up to brows, all furred with rich green 
plantation; the sky is wistfully blue, hoping that 
the sunlight will tarry a little now it has come at 
last. The breeze that bowls over the Downs you 
can feel in the very bottom of your lungs, cleaning 
your blood. As you begin to rejoice in all this, 
there rises into your vision the Grand Stand and 
the racecourse and all the tawdry vulgarities that 
have sprung up in a night about them. London 
looks to have oozed out and laid a patch of its 
slimy self over the beginning of the clean country. 

Already a village of vans has sat down on the 
gorse-bushes. At rest the vans lose their sugges- 
tion of ships. You notice, rather, the clean window 
curtains, and begin to think you could be a gipsy 
after all. Having arrived and got their pitches, 
half of them are making holiday before the work- 
ing days begin' — a simple sort of holiday, that con- 
sists, for the young, the touzle-haired, and bare- 
legged, in pulling each other aimlessly over the 
turf, but for the staider elders in lying down to sleep 
in the sun. You are reminded that the gipsy is a 
true oriental in this, that he has no bedtime. 

But we must not harrow ourselves unduly. The 



292 THINGS SEEN 

gipsy is happy enough in his dirt ; and if you don't 
hke it, there are comely sights on Epsom Downs, 
even before the Derby. Along with the gipsies have 
come the advanced-guard of the costers — a very 
different class. The coster is a happy-go-lucky 
fellow, and on occasion blasphemous ; but he is 
also quick, ready, skilled in men, and especially in- 
dependent. On an occasion Hke this, in the coun- 
try, where good business is to be combined with 
pleasure, his womankind are a sight w^orth coming 
so far to see. They are neither shabby nor gaudy : 
their gowns and hats are black, their adornments 
are no more than clear eyes and yet clearer weath- 
er-ripened cheeks, and aprons spotlessly white and 
so stiffly starched that they could stand by them- 
selves. 

The sight of two such, walking casually among 
the streets of vans and shock-headed viragoes, 
cheerfully and hopelessly asking if anybody has 
seen a young feller with a pony-cart pass that way, 
is enough to sweeten the whole scene for at least a 
moment. But when you look at it again, you may 
love horses and racing as much as you like, but 
your heart sinks. You see all the naked apparatus 
of pleasure, and it looks as a circus might at noon- 
day, or a fashionable beauty without her paint and 
powder. To-morrow it may not be beautiful, but 
at least it will be crowded, merry, roaring with en- 
joyment, fulfilling its pilrpose in Hfe. To-day the 
swings and merry-go-rounds are gaunt skeletons 
being patched together, or heaps of garish yellow 



THE DERBY 293 

and vermilion sticks and boards strewn on the 
desecrated green. The refreshment-booths are 
heaps of forms and trestles littered with coarse 
crockery. The whole place is covered with loiter- 
ing scallywags, touts and tramps and beggars, the 
scum of England. 

And the beer ! Beer is good, but to see it hauled 
up the day before, in cold blood, is all but to turn 
teetotaller. Drays and drays and drays of it — beer 
arriving, beer disembarking, barrels of beer ranged 
in every tent, empty drays going back for more. 
Some of the loafers have begun on it already, and 
stagger instead of shuffling : you wonder what they 
will be Hke by Oaks night. 

The whole thing is altogether too naked, you 
feel : it wants draping into decency. When you 
go down into Epsom you find it full of horse-faced 
stable-lads out of work, who ask you whether by 
any chance you have a steeplechaser that wants 
schooling, and, if not, whether you have a shilling. 
Outside the station the street is double-lined with 
lounging unemployed, ostensibly waiting to carry 
visionary bags. By every train pour in blue- 
chinned, hungry-faced bookmakers. The tail of 
yellow brakes is already standing to take to-mor- 
row's crowds up to the course. A steady stream 
of horses, that have left coaches ready in their 
places in the enclosure or vans immobile for the 
week, plod wearily back for more. 

This is not a sermon : I could write you just as 
forbidding a description of the eve of a first night, 



294 THINGS SEEN 

or a Church Congress, or a Handel Festival, or 
the places where they make the dresses for a fancy 
ball. When it is dressed and at work it will look 
quite different, only it is never pleasant to contem- 
plate the raw material of pleasure. 

II. 

What a day ! We could tell in an instant that it 
would be glorious as soon as we put our heads out- 
side the door on to the Epsom road. 

We got in and up ostentatiously, half the house- 
hold) — the other half sorrowed at home, only half 
believing that there will be another Derby next 
year — and went off with the blessed knowledge that 
all the neighbours saw us go. They were all on 
the pavements, or at their windows, or the doors of 
their shops. They were not going, it is true, but 
for all that they were to enjoy their day watching 
the other people. That is the beauty of Derby Day, 
especially on the Epsom road: it is of universal 
enjoyment — the great festival of all the cockney 
year. 

The costers, who inhabit our quarter in great 
strength, were going too. Oh yes, they were go- 
ing — old man and old woman and kids and pony 
and moke. We started early : the coaches and 
brakes had not yet got so far from Piccadilly, and 
the road belonged — as indeed it mostly belongs all 
Derby Day — to the poor. But none of them — not 
the tradesman in his market-cart lined with Wind- 



THE DERBY 295 

sor chairs, not even the fair ladies you divine inside 
the darkHng furniture-vans — can touch the coster. 

He is the only man of his class who always takes 
the whole family on the jaunt, and they are the only 
kind of family that knows how to turn itself out. 
The well-fed Polly or Neddy in the shafts, the har- 
ness picked out with ribbons or bunches of lilac, 
the long, new-painted, highly-variegated cart that 
balances on its axletree like a liner at sea, the old 
man's twinkling eyes and weather-reddened cheeks, 
the old woman in crimson velvet or lilac silk sitting 
so bolt upright, so queenly under her diadem of 
feathers, the tiny boys in their square-tailed grey 
coats and their square capable faces,- — oh yes, give 
me the coster on Derby Day. There is nothing 
like him outside London, and nothing inside either. 

We roll out between the familiar meadows. On 
the roadside rest foot-passengers ; a steady stream 
of them sets all along the road, the British working 
man walking down. He looks twice the man he 
does on other daysi — striding along, holding himself 
upright, smoking his old pipe. Who grudges him 
the buttercups and the sweet hawthorn and the 
cloudless blue — already filtered so clean from the 
reek of London ? What a day ! 

North Cheam, the Queen Victoria's Head, Ewell, 
Epsom — every soul on the pavements — Ashley 
Road — and we are there already. Just in time to 
get the carriage into the front row, and get two 
good hours from the first race. But that is all the 
better. There are those among us who have never 



296 THINGS SEEN 

seen a bookmaker, and wonder why showers of 
leaflets drop from a still sky : two hours fly as ten 
minutes in such initiations. But meanwhile, and 
from the first moment to the last, what a sight ! 

The day before the meeting the course was an 
abomination, an outrage on the clear sky and the 
lift of the Downs and the iar-ofi blotches of wood- 
land. But to-day London has come out and draped 
the indecency, and it is all pure holiday. The 
shabby vans and shaggy ponies and shock-headed 
women and children now fall into their proper 
places as the framework of the world's greatest fair. 
The Hill, which on Monday was a stack of tawdry 
bits of timber and dirty canvas, to-day, upholstered 
with people, has become a very palace of pleasure. 
It stands up over against you with the white and 
blue and scarlet signs of the silver ring, the red 
and yellow of the swings and merry-go-rounds ; 
the colours are just as garish as they ever were, 
but now they are only the embroidery on a spread- 
ing cloak of black-coated Londoners, 

You might think that the whole city had mi- 
grated on to the Downs. You wonder what Lon- 
don is like at this moment : is it possible that many 
poor wretches are left there breathing the air 
through that respirator of smoke? Here, although 
the dust is in your nostrils, you still smell the may 
through it. At least, there are thousands on thous- 
ands enjoying that smell to-day, and you rejoice; 
for the Derby is one of those blessed days when 
everybody v/ants everybody to enjoy himself. 



THE DERBY 297 

By now the stands opposite us are black with 
people ; the whole course is black as far as Tatten- 
ham Corner, and beyond ; wherever you look is a 
thick black carpet pricked with myriads of pin- 
point faces. It is a huge city, almost a nation in 
itself. Only this is a city where everybody can see 
the sky' — a whole hemisphere of it : we may thank 
the wisdom of our fathers for giving London an 
institution like the Derby. The Prince of Wales 
is under the clock under the royal standard ; the 
dustman is on the course below, brushing against 
the frock-coat of a Cabinet Minister. And they 
are all enjoying themselves, and enjoying the en- 
joyment of the others. 

However, we came to see races' — and now the 
limber two-year-olds are stretching their long legs 
in the canter ; a few minutes and they come thun- 
dering past us home. Sloan, wins ! and nobody 
grudges it him ; yet, if it were an omen ! Surely 
Providence will never allow a French colt with an 
American rider to win our Derby ! We lost heavily 
on the first race, and worse on the second ; yet on 
the Derby none of us really cared to bet at all. It 
was almost too dear and important an issue for 
bettingj — almost as bad as insuring your mother's 
life. 

Now comes the bell, and that ever-wonderful 
scene of clearing the course — ^the black river that 
dries up in five minutes at the hand-wave of a few 
score of men in blue coats and helmets. Another 
wait — and here come the horses. They walk past, 
and then canter back — Holocauste first, looking a 



298 THINGS SEEN 

bit of a slug, with Sloan riding him as if he were 
a bicycle ; then the rest of the shining ones ; and 
last Flying Fox, with what a reach, what an all- 
conquering stride, and a man on his back that sits 
and has hands left to ride with. They disappear, 
and then we wait and wait and wait. Time after 
time the silk jackets break away behind us and file 
slowly back. Won't it be all in favour of the slug? 
Wasn't Flying Fox tearing a httle at his bit in the 
canter? Quarter-past three, half-past — off: no, 
false start again — twenty to, quarter to — ah! A 
breathless interval, and there they sweep over the 
hill, well together. Now they are shut out again ; 
but now they are tearing round the corner. Little 
spots of colour are sliding down the hill ; now jerk- 
ing furiously up it. Nearer and nearer, bigger and 
bigger ; the earth trembles ; the wave of colour 
surges up, and — yellow. Flying Fox, Morning Can- 
non, by all that's glorious ! Running under the 
whip, with some of the fire out of his action, but 
still that conquering stride. A yellow ray across 
the eyes — a flash of the jockey's square resolute 
face as he looks round an instant, and then — ah-h ! 
Our Derby is our Derby still. 

Somehow there seem to be fewer Frenchmen 
than there were a minute ago. Yet we can all spare 
a pang for a good horse come to grief and for a 
plucky rider beaten, who yet weighs out next race. 
But to hold up a horse round Tattenham Corner, 
we tell ourselves with great sageness, you need to 
sit on his back. 



THE DERBY 299 

■ More races : we lose our money quite cheerfully, 
for the country is saved, and our best horseman has 
won his Derby. Under the unaccustomed sun we 
all sit and are happy, till suddenly — oh, alas! — the 
last race is run, and we must go home. You would 
say that this black garment of people could never 
be pulled off the Downs. Coaches and landaus and 
coster-carts start and start and start ; yet there isn't 
even room made for us to put in our horses. The 
broad black river in the course flows and flows, but 
it never seems to get thinner. The truth is that 
nobody cares to go away : the evening air and the 
evening sun and the evening scents are all kisses. 
We get away at last. It appears that the tin 
trumpet is this year's foolishness for coming home, 
with paper sunshades for yourself and — if you are 
a coster and your beast is a friendi — for him also. 
When you have been to the Derby the tin trumpet 
sounds quite passable. We observ-e a good many 
stoppages by the way. Many of them are near 
public-houses, certainly, but not nearly all. The 
truth is that the Derby is a day of days, and nobody 
is in a hurry to get it over. Hundreds stop just 
to get a little more green hedgerow : the pony has 
a feed, and they sit quite happily on the cooling 
grass. It is not the racing entirely, and it is not 
wholly the air and the sun and the green, nor the 
blending of all classes, nor the lunch, nor the beer. 
It is all together. It is just the Derby — London's 
day of pure enjoyment. What a day ! 



THE CESAREWITCH.i 

Cambridge is a quiet world to itself, with its grey 
cloisters, silent spires, pale preoccupied professors. 
Walk fifty yards up the Cambridge platform and 
you come out on another world, as utterly apart 
and to itself, and utterly dififerent. The inhabitants 
of this world wear overcoats down to their heels, 
instead of gowns; their faces are ruddy, or by'r 
Lady inclining to purple ; they are puckered round 
the eyes ; pink cards peep out of their pockets, and 
sporting newspapers cascade over their knees ; they 
smoke large cigars incessantly, and they are not 
silent. What they tell }OU may or may not be what 
they wish you to believe, but they have certainly 
no hesitation in telling it. They are not afraid to 
talk their own shop, these dwellers in the world of 
racing; what but racing should a man talk? Nor 
yet are they afraid of talking to each other: the 
world of racing, popularly supposed to be the pre- 
serve of a corrupted aristocracy, is really a far more 
genuine democracy than any trade union. The 
precise mannerly gentleman in the corner of the 
carriage is explaining that he had a good win at 
Kempton with The Nailer, but that it would have 
been better if his trial horse had not cut it at the 
finish ; it disconcerts him not a bit that there is 

^ Daily Mail, October 14, 1897, 
800 



THE CESAREWITCH 30I 

nobody to tell the tale to but the flashy, h-dropping 
professional backer. Only he prefers to talk of the 
past of his stable rather than of its future. The 
rest take pencils and make marks on their cards, 
and little sums on the margins of their newspapers, 
brows lined with anxious thought. For the Cesare- 
witch is a piece of serious business — ^business to 
be buckled to. The great day comes just as you 
realise that the flat-racing season will not last for 
ever; and if you are to come out on the right side 
you had better get to work at once. The air of 
Newmarket is tonic to the stomach and disinfect- 
ant in the lungs ; but it is plain that to-day we 
are not going to Newmarket for the fresh air. The 
Cesarewitch is not a public holiday like the Derby, 
nor a fashionable reunion like the Ascot Cup. It 
is hardly to be called even sport, any more than a 
picture-sale is to be called art. Many go there for 
enjoyment rather than for money ; but it is a very 
specialised form of enjoyment. For the rest it is 
just business — hard, profit-and-loss business. 

It is so when we come out, under the lukewarm 
October sun, on to the rolling green of the Heath. 
It spreads out, billowing right and left, like a sea. 
But every man, on foot, in cabs, on horseback, is 
heading towards the grey island that rises in the 
middle with white benches jutting out from it — 
the stands and the rails. There the crowd gathers 
and blackens — dense at the centre, thinning at the 
fringes. The Cesarewitch course is like an island 
in the world of complex England^ — once more a life 



302 THINGS SEEN 

apart to which a point in the odds is more than the 
rise in bread, and the state of The Rush's legs more 
than the fortunes of empires. Notice that there is 
no rowdyism to-day, nobody changing hats with 
elect donahs, no tomfoolery, no quarrelling, no 
drunkenness. The crowd is small, by comparison, 
but it is select — though it does not always look it. 
Everybody has come on business, and what is more, 
everybody knows his business. 

Only a dozen ladies in the paddock — and they 
are calculating their bets, and wondering what 
Manton means about Jacobus, There are peers, 
and there are stable-boys ; but they are all equal 
here, and all serious. They are not rushing about to 
see this horse or that horse ; they know all about 
them already. A couple of two-year-olds, their 
elaborate clothing and eye-holes suggesting a 
diver's dress, are lashing out in the true two-year- 
old form — lanky skittish beasts, hardly seeming to 
feel the ground under them, yet with all sorts of 
potentialities of beauty and power ; they remind 
you rather of misses from a boarding-school. No- 
body takes any notice of such except the baby boy 
perched on the filly's back — his feet don't nearly 
reach to the stirrups, but he shortens or lengthens 
the reins with the dignity of one who is going to win 
the Derby in 1907 — and the careful lad who has 
got to keep some hundred pounds' worth of horse 
from the destruction which it is trying to rush 
upon. But never mind all that; to business and 
into the Ring. 



THE CESAREWITCH 303 

When you turn the corner of the subway from 
the paddock and begin to climb the steps, the noise 
of a furious riot breaks on you suddenly. Of course 
you have heard it often enough, but it never ceases 
to be a wonder of nature that so few men can 
make so ear-splitting a babel. When you get up 
the steps you are like to be hurled back again ; 
there is little enough room to stroll round the Ring 
on Cesarewitch day. The profession of bookmak- 
ing must be a prosperous one, even in these anti- 
gambling days ; else why are they so ostentatiously 
well nourished, so ostentatiously sound in limb and 
wind ? "Five to one bar one ! Ten to one bar two ! 
Evens the feeyuld !" It makes the unaccustomed 
head go round, of course ; but did it never occur 
to you what a combination of gifts the bookmaker 
must possess to make a living at all? Look at the 
great big men in check ulsters and cloth caps: 
Jones & Brown is the firm, and each wears his 
name as a scarf-pin in the touching belief, appar- 
ently, that somebody cares which is Jones and 
which is Brown. Jones is bellowing the odds like 
a bull. But all the time he has got to keep one eye 
on his customers and another on the columns of 
figures wherein Brown is recording the bets, and 
an eye in the side of his head on the unshaven 
little man in a broken hat, who is semaphoring 
signals with his arms, and another in the back of 
his head on the white flag down the broad course, 
which will fall at the start. Also, he has got to hear 
his clients speak over his own voice, to catch the 



304 THINGS SEEN 

rival bellow of old Jim Jacksoni — who, surely, must 
know something — laying a point more, and to keep 
the state of his book in his head all the while. A 
very remarkable man is Jones, and if he gets my 
sovereign — and of course he does — he deserves it. 

"Off!" "Unned pound I name the winnah!" 
"Fifties Schomberg!" "Pullin' Watts out of the 
saddle !" "Don't be too sure of that, my son" — 
and therewith the two horses come thudding past, 
and one jockey is waving his whip like a windmill, 
and Count Schomberg's resolute stride lengthens, 
but slackens, and that's all over. Say half a minute 
of fierce excitement for a quarter of an hour's deaf- 
ness, and as much money as you may like to spend 
on it — only, who shall say it is not worth it? 

Now "On the Csesar-witch I'm betting; win, 
and one, two, three." We must go over on to the 
hill to see that. The hill is just about as much a 
hill as the ditch is a ditch, or the bushes bushes. 
To the profane eye the hill is a gentle slope, and 
the ditch a bank, and of the bushes the less said 
the better; yet they are not the less sacred for that. 
Gorgeous young men, in boots you might shave 
in ; ladies in clinging habits ; sharp, clean-shaven 
trainers; breeched and gaitered stable-boys, even 
sharper-faced than their masters ; members of Par- 
liament, and touts out at the knee, — all stand in the 
keen air and wait. Wait, wait, and wait. You can 
imagine what is happening at the posti — the two or 
three horses who don't mean to wait for anybody ; 
the long line of brilliant jackets, now advancing, now 



THE CESAREWITCH 305 

breaking line and turning back again ; the patient 
starter speaking to the jockeys hke a father with 
"Go back, there," and "Don't trot forward now." 
Then "Ofif" again — Heaven knows how everybody 
is silent and solemn in a moment that roared so 
loud before. Then another wait. Then far away a 
little patch coming nearer — only coming nearer 
slowly. Nearer yet, and now you can see they are 
a line of horses with a streak of variegated but in- 
distinguishable colour above them. Now you can 
see them like a charge of cavalry. Not one a foot 
ahead of another, as it seems. The Rush ! Was 
not that The Rush drawing out as they were behind 
the Bushes and into the Dip. A minute, an hour; 
are they never coming into sight again ? Then sud- 
denly they flash up — no charge of cavalry now, but 
streaming into view like a garden of many flowers, 
all scattered. The fierce yell comes up with them to 
the thunderous beat of the hoof. "The Rush, The 
Rush wins !" But from just behind "The Rush" 
shoots out something else. A green-and-white 
sleeve lashing madly, a turquoise-and-fawn body 
shooting securely ahead of it. "Merman ! Merman ! 
Merman !" And that's over. 

The horses are blowing and sobbing as the 
jockeys slide ofif down their streaming steaming 
sides. Little boys with chubby cheeks and little 
boys with the faces of wizened old men, they take 
up their tiny saddles and go off to the weighing- 
room. "Thank you so much ; and I do so hope 
you backed him," says Mrs, Langtry. The Cesare- 



3o6 THINGS SEEN 

witch is run, and our real day's work is done. On 
the Ring has fallen a great silence. Over the thous- 
ands of faces, fine-lined or coarse, powdered or 
pimpled, settles the vague look of abstraction, of 
calculation. Business is over ; how do we come 
out? Thus the little world of racing and its little 
town in Cambridgeshire has had its Afridi campaign 
and its shipbuilding strike. Its bit of history is 
made for to-day. It walks away pondering over the 
momentous event, with little disconnected scraps 
of talk, such as, " 'E come up the 'ill well." Every- 
body knows who 'e is ; how could anybody be think- 
ing of anybody else ? 



TWO HOSPITALS. 
I. 

OUT-PATIENTS' DAY.' 

In the surgeon's room — half underground, half 
lighted, hardly ventilated, smaller than your draw- 
ing-room — lounged a couple of dozen students. Sit- 
ting on Windsor chairs or standing in the best of 
the light, patient but listless, half fear, half hope, 
were about a dozen working men. Along the dim 
passages leaned half a dozen more ; beyond in the 
dim waiting-hall, sitting on rows of benches like 
children in school, were perhaps a couple of hun- 
dred people — women in fringes and aprons, women 
with scraggy babies under their shawls, dockers in 
corduroys, tan-faced sailors, Jew tailors in reach- 
me-downs, some shepherding pale, bright-eyed 
children, some shepherding friends who could speak 
no English. Beyond in the larger, lighter, medical 
waiting-hall were perhaps twice as many again of 
the same sort. The place smelt of helplessness in 
all of its forms, whether ignorance, poverty, or vice, 
and especially disease. 

It was an afternoon's work of the London Hos- 
pital. If you will take a map of London and stick 
a pin into the site of the hospital, just opposite the 
' Daily Mail, June 28, 1898. 
307 



3o8 THINGS SEEN 

Metropolitan Railway's Whitechapel and Mile-End 
stations, you will see why it is the rendezvous of 
misery. Westward to Aldgate, southward by the 
docks to the Thames, north and east just as far as 
you like — all round it spreads a wilderness of undis- 
tinguished streets. Houses line the streets like peas 
in a pod ; men and women and children swarm and 
fester in them like maggots in a pea. There are no 
ladies and gentlemen : everybody is poor, and must 
work or starve. The fog and the dirt and the strain- 
ing work breed diseases most abundantly just in the 
people who are helpless against them. Then, when 
they must mend or starve, they come to the London 
Hospital. 

The surgeon strode in — an apparition of great 
size and strength, strained to its extreme, of a calm 
keen face, and hands both fine and powerful. In 
less than one minute he was in his place, the 
students were in theirs, and among the patients 
hope began to get the upper hand of fear. From 
his desk the surgeon took up one of many forms 
with writing upon it. He read out a name from the 
top ; a dumpy man stepped into the semicircle and 
sat down. Instead of looking at him the surgeon 
began to read the ^listory and symptoms of his case 
from the paper. 

Seconds are precious in the London Hospital, 
and you very soon saw that none is wasted. Yet it 
occurred to the mind that the surgeon could have 
come to the point quicker by looking at the man 
himself. But that would be attending to onlv one- 



• TWO HOSPITALS 309 

half the hospital's work. Out-patients must be re- 
lieved ; but also students must be taught. You in 
Mayfair, or Hampstead, or Clapham, may imagine 
that the London Hospital is nothing to you. You 
are callous to a great deal of misery, if you do, and 
very short-sighted in supposing that half your fel- 
low-citizens can putrefy without rotting the whole ; 
also, in point of fact, you are very wrong. When 
you are ill, where does your doctor come from ? He 
reads his books at Cambridge, maybe ; but where 
did he see a scalpel? Where do they make doctors? 
Where but in the place which gives most chance of 
learning diseases? You may pay a couple of 
guineas in Harley Street whenever you have a head- 
ache ; but none the less you, and all of us, have a 
direct debt to pay to the hospitals which provide 
healers for rich as well as poor. 

Each patient, therefore, had been tackled by a 
student, and he had written down his diagnosis. 
The surgeon read it off, and then, ruling out irrele- 
vancies, recapitulated the four or five important 
factors. 'Whose case?" "Mine," said a boy in blue 
serge. "What',s your diagnosis?" The boy an- 
swered something I did not understand. The sur- 
geon agreed, but distinguished. Which breed of 
the particular disease was it ? and why ? The gen- 
tleman in question was suffering from a kind of 
eruption on the chin ; and I gathered that the stu- 
dent rather plunged in his reply, alleging that the 
patient caught it from his barber's razor. "How 
do you know that?" inquired the remorseless man of 



310 THINGS SEEN 

science. There was not very much doubt in his 
own mind that the student was right ; but moral 
certainty does not do for surgical education. Hairs 
were plucked out of the offending skin and dipped 
in liquor potass out of a bottle, and put into the 
microscope. Meanwhile the next case was called. 
1^: The next case was a man with a cyst behind his 
ear : being sent away to have it cut out, he ex- 
pressed a preference for chloroform over laughing- 
gas, presumably as being the more aristocratic 
anaesthetic of the two ; but laughing-gas was what 
he got. The next was a docker, who had fallen on 
to his knee; the next a leg which required massage. 
He ought to have got it twice a day, but the hos- 
pital can't afiford it, and of course he couldn't afford 
it himself. Then a gentleman who had got it into 
his head that he mustn't eat vegetables, and had 
consequently come out purple over the skin. Then 
a gentleman who, being told to lead a horse, had 
preferred to ride it : he had never been across a 
horse before, and after an hour and a half, and a 
cropper on the head, was surprised that he went 
very stiff. Then a forem.an from a chemical factory : 
he had been working with mercury, and his teeth 
were on the point of falling out of his jaw. 

Then another, and another, and another — one 
done, next come on : a relentless tale of ignorance 
and labour and drink and vice. You saw the half- 
innocent sins of twenty years ago come grinning up 
with their punishment ; you saw perky-faced chil- 
dren wincing for the half-remembered debauches 



TWO HOSPITALS 31 1 

of their fathers. It was humiliating- to manhood, 
and yet it was heroic. For in each distress human 
knowledge and skill fought on undiscouraged 
against human folly and weakness. The piercing 
reek of iodoform, the unflinching scalpel, the reveal- 
ing microscope, the sterilised tube to be examined 
for bacteria, the ghostly Rontgen photograph — in 
one afternoon you could see every weapon plied in- 
cessantly in the heroic unequal combat. 

For the combat is terribly unequal. Fighting 
disease in the London Hospital is like fighting a 
big bully in a strait-waistcoat. You saw it plainly 
when the first batch of patients had been despatched 
and the second string came in. They were told 
ofif one apiece to a student, as before, and every- 
thing had to be done in the one narrow half-lit 
room. In a minute it was a jungle of human bodies 
— half-naked men, fathers stripping misshapen chil- 
dren, students dodging under swollen arms and 
stepping over varicose veins to get at the case they 
could hardly touch for the crowd and hardly see for 
the dusk. 

Everything inside makes against good work, as 
everything outside strives to stifle good results ; yet 
the good work goes on undismayed. Face after 
face that came in timid and heavy went out light. 
Out of its cramped poverty the hospital gave freely 
and kept back nothing. "I haven't come provided," 
said a lame girl who was ordered to bed. "You 
don't need to be provided — we provide," was the 
superb reply. 

The evening wound up with a couple of opera- 



312 THINGS SEEN 

tions. Faithful accounts of operations do not suit 
all palates, so we will glide over these lightly. A 
great surgeon operating is like a great general fight- 
ing an action. Staff and guns, infantry and cavalry 
■ — chloroformist and dressers and nurses — each unit 
in its place, knowing its own work and doing it to 
the second, all working swiftly and smoothly to- 
gether to the one end, and the one mind controlling 
every movement. The inanimate-animate body on 
the wheeled table, the reek of the antiseptics, the 
cHnk of the instruments, snatched up or replaced, 
in the disinfectant bath, the brief words of com- 
mand, the hush, the hands that fly to and fro, over 
and under, conveying the next thing needed, the 
firm, accurate hand that carves and saws, then cov- 
ers up and heals, — these are the master-marvels of 
all the hospital's beneficence. A child's knee fresh 
opened, freed from diseased bone, and then fastened 
together again in its right shape, for all the world 
like mending a wooden doll. 

If the disease is a scalding shame to our human 
nature, the hand and eye and brain that heal are a 
halo of glory. 

II. 

IN THE THEATRE.^ 

The theatre was full of the piercing smell of 
iodoform. About its lowest tiers lounged a dozen 
students. 

' Daily Mail, April % 1899. 



TWO HOSPITALS 313 

On the floor stood a doctor, grey-bearded, mo- 
tionless, hands thrust into his overcoat pockets. 
Everybody else on the floor was all strained atten- 
tion and swift movement — the two elder students 
behind the tables with bright steel instruments in 
small tanks of water-made antiseptics; the nurse 
at the table with the sponges and basins of water- 
some clear, some pink, some scarlet; the proba- 
tioner at the sink and tap ; the nursing sisters hand- 
ing things to the surgeons ; the two surgeons them- 
selves, shirt-sleeved, arms bare to the elbow, cov- 
ered up in big white aprons. 

Between their swift movements you could see 
lying on the slab in the centre a human body. Man 
or woman you could not say, for over the whole 
face was a large leather cap, and growing out of it 
a brown bladder like an empty football ; the chloro- 
formist held it tight over mouth and nose. Sud- 
denly the bald-headed surgeon, stepping aside, lets 
in a ghmpse of an amputated arm. 

There hung from it a bunch of what looked like 
little steel skewers. These were the clips with which 
they catch up and close the ends of the severed 
vessels. The arm was off above the elbow, and the 
second half of the operation was in rapid, almost 
stealthy, progress. 

You could hardly follow the surgeon's hand as 
he took a bit of salmon-gut from the watching 
attendant; before you saw it was whipped round 
an artery and had tied it up. The clip was off and 
passed back to the hand waiting to receive it. One 



314 THINGS SEEN 

after another the cHps came back into their tank. 
Then the surgeon's brisk word of command broke 
the dead silence : "Hot lotion," he said, without 
looking up. It was there, ready, in the slight sis- 
ter's hand ; in a second, as by jugglery, it was in 
the surgeon's, and being passed over the wound. 
Then the flaps of skin were drawn. 

"Iodoform'" — and by another hardly perceptible 
piece of legerdemain a pepper-castor was shaking 
yellow powder on the wound. 

"Bandages" — and they had sprung up in the 
sister's hand, and in a second the light-coloured 
antiseptic dressings were being strapped on hastily, 
firmly, with exact precision. Now you saw the 
leather cap was off the face : it was a young beard- 
less man, very pale, rolling his head over on the 
pillow, with a twitter of returning life, very ill from 
the ether. 

But before he had time to realise what had hap- 
pened the maimed arm was strapped to his side ; 
a door had opened noiselessly, and a bed had trun- 
dled in; the bundle of blankets was lifted swiftly 
but gently^ — by two attendants catching him up on 
the same side, so as not to jar the shattered body 
• — back on to its bed. In an instant the bed was 
away and the door was shut. And, looking round, 
you saw that all the paraphernalia, the tables and 
instruments, sponges and basins, had disappeared 
too. 

It was like a dream of magic, a fairy-tale of the 
end of the nineteenth century, to come in from the 



TWO HOSPITALS 315 

everyday bustle of London and find such wonders 
being wrought in the midst of it. The work was so 
silent, so quick, so self-possessed ; it seemed to 
move by itself smoothly, infallibly, as if those en- 
gaged in it had ceased to be separate men and 
women. No hitch, no hesitation, no pause ; every- 
thing in its exact place, everything at its exact 
time. 

Almost before you have had time to wonder, 
another bed has come in by another door. The 
patient on it is a woman, white-haired, seventy 
years old. But her face is placid and quite unafraid 
as she is lifted on to the operating-table; indeed, 
there is nothing visible to frighten. But as she is 
laid down the noiseless miracle begins again. Sud- 
denly the instruments and attendants are all in their 
places again. The patient is breathing in anodyne 
insensibility from the cup and bladder. The sur- 
geon, tall, grey, bushy-browed, his long hands a 
model of delicacy linked with strength, is explain- 
ing the case to the students : it is cancer, and he 
has authority to cut it away. It is part of the mira- 
cle — only by now you have ceased to be surprised 
— that he has finished his explanation exactly at 
the moment the patient is ready for him. He steps 
up to the body, gives a keen glance at the stain on 
the arm, touches it. "Scalpel," he says, without 
looking up, and the keen blade is instantly in his 
hand. 

His hand is travelling over the arm — but surely 
not cutting? The flesh seems to divide before it, 



3l6 THINGS SEEN 

so exquisitely edged is the knife, so firm and true 
the fingers and wrist. Little streams suddenly well 
up and trickle down the arm. "Sponge," and a 
sponge has appeared and swept them away. "Clip," 
and a clip has glided from its tank, and has stopped 
the cut vein. Gradually — it is only seconds, but 
they are packed with the interest of hours — there 
grows a deep red gash behind the ever-moving 
scalpel. It moves a shade more slowly now ; it is 
picking its way among arteries, and a hair's-breadtli 
to left or right may mean death. No sound but the 
sharp orders and the perpetual gush of water from 
the tap where the probationer is emptying the red- 
dened water and refilling the bowl for the clean 
sponges. There remains the crimson chasm fringed 
with clips. Now comes what we have seen before : 
the clips come off one by one as the blood-vessels 
are tied up ; the lotion washes all clean ; the gash, 
which looked as if half the arm had been cut out, 
closes up to a natural form and size. And as that 
dimly waking woman is whisked away, the surgeon, 
calling for a basin, and passing it round, resumes his 
remarks on cancer. 

The next case is cancer too, only it is cancer in 
the mouth and jaw. Cheek and jaw are to be cut 
away : to keep the man alive yet insensible the 
while, he must have chloroformed air pumped into 
his lungs. The chloroformist has got a long tube 
with a bladder at the end. The sponges in this case 
are small, and held on long clips. He is an obscene- 
looking old man, his face dyed with drink, and 



TWO HOSPITALS 317 

two front teeth gone. As he is strapped down, the 
sweet sticky smell of chloroform begins to conquer 
the iodoform ; it is being sprinkled on to the cloth 
over his face. As it gets hold of him he starts mut- 
tering in a thick drunken tone, then struggles, and 
tries to sit up, while the mutter swells into a half- 
articulate curse. But now he is ready, and "Scal- 
pel," calls the surgeon. He bends over, and you 
see the blade gleam. Again it is not like cutting. 
The man is sobbing and moaning now, his cries 
rising and falling as if with the violence of the 
pain, though he cannot really feel anything. 

As the moan rises louder to a muffled yell, the 
surgeon pauses to let the chloroformed cloth lie 
over the mouth for a moment ; then comes the time 
to cut the bone. The long keen saw is so fine that 
but for the grinding of the bone you might have 
thought it a simple steel rod. 

Everybody is working now for the man's life ; the 
lithe swiftness of movement is almost dazzling. 
Left hands and right hands seem each to be think- 
ing for themselves ; the sponges are handed with 
breathless haste: the sister slips them in, now over 
a shoulder, now under an arm, to the ready hand 
that must not wait half a second ; surgeon, assist- 
ant, and chloroformist, whoever has a hand to 
spare, nips up the sponge and plunges it down the 
subject's throat. Then the shining shears plunge in 
too and grip the bone ; the veins stand out on the 
surgeon's hands as he forces the sharp blades to- 



3l8 THINGS SEEN 

gether with every ounce of his strength. Crack — 
from somewhere inside. 

Then another grip, another wrench, another 
crack ; "Basin" — and the himp of bone comes 
away. It is over now ; the chps sticking up out 
of the throat disappear one by one. Then the deft 
healing hand closes the wound, and the face is a 
face again. 

You go out dazed — quite lost in wonder and 
admiration. You did not expect to see your fel- 
lows cut up alive with excitement and enthusiasm. 
Yet enthusiasm it is. If what you have seen did no 
possible good to anybody, it would still be un- 
speakably noble as the highest exercise of human 
science and handicraft. Being also the Hfe-saving 
it is, how can any adjective say enough to praise it? 
You can only repeat, "A miracle, a miracle," and 
wonder whether it looks more diabolical or angelic 
— diabolical in its superhuman accomplishment, 
angelic in its superhuman beneficence. 



APPENDIX 



FROM THE 'LADYSMITH LYRE.' 

EDITORIAL NOTE. 

The following extracts from the "Ladysmith Lyre," that 
pathetic trophy of indomitable cheerfulness, have been 
included by the desire of many friends. The interest 
of them is personal, since they are of the last words which 
George Steevens wrote, and one of character, the circum- 
stances of their writing considered, and it is thought that 
for such a reason, over and above their intrinsic merit, 
their inclusion will be welcomed. 



THE WAR OF KINGS. 

Mahabir Thapa is an expert in war. From his 
infancy he has engaged in the destruction of man- 
kind. At his mother's breast he strangled his twin 
brother. Before he tramped down to Gorakhpur 
to eiiHst as a "rifleman" of the Kampani Bahadur 
he had survived four divorce cases ; and every one 
knows a Gurkha co-respondent must be well versed 
in war thus to clear his character. I first saw 
Mahabir in the Swat Valley. He was a little scrap 
319 



320 APPENDIX 

of a Havildar in the IV. Gurkhas, and was standing 
outside his coloners tent picking the beard hairs 
out of a ghastly trophy in heads. On the previous 
evening the colonel had offered three rupees to the 
man who would effectually silence a "sniper" who 
had pitched Martini bullets into the camp with per- 
sistent monotony. Mahabir had earned the three 
rupees, and had brought in the Pathan's head as a 
proof of good faith. The next time that he tumbled 
across my path, I found him a smartly turned out 
Jemadar attached to the Gurkha scouts. In this 
service he had ample opportunity of improving his 
knowledge of war. Therefore, when to my surprise 
I found him in Ladysmith, masquerading as a 
dooley-bearer, I appealed to him for an expert 
opinion. 

"What do you think of it, Sirdar?" 

"Sahib, I have seen many wars, but this is before 
all wars — this is the war of kings. Cannon on this 
side, cannon on that side, was there ever such a 
war? Surely this is Badshai ke larai." 

"Come along, Sirdar, come to my room and we 
will talk it all over." 

I took him to my quarters and placed a Mauser 
carbine and a brandy in his hands. 

"What do you think of this, Sirdar?". He 
turned the weapon over half-a-dozen times, tried 
the breech action, pressed down the magazine 
spring, and then threw the rifle on the bed. "Sahib, 
it is good, but the war is bad. This war is like a 
shikar party given by Jung Bahadur, a State shikar 



APPENDIX 321 

party. Here are elephants, armies of beaters, tents, 
food in plenty, music, fireworks, and nantches; but 
no kills, except such game as the keepers had or- 
ders to slay overnig-ht and had strewn in the path 
of the elephants, that the guests might be pleased. 
Even as this is this war. It is the war of kings, not 
of men. When men go forth to war, or sport, they 
gird up their loins, pack food on their backs, and 
make no noise. The less noise the more war." 

"Then do you approve of this show ?" 

"Sahib, it is magnificent, a great game; men 
watch for the smoke of the guns, then run into 
holes and laugh and clap their hands. There they 
sit in safety, counting the loss and gain with a 
thousand rupees in the mouth of each gun. Why 
spend this money and do no good? If we run to 
holes, will not the dusJiman do likewise, will he not 
laugh and also clap his hands? For one hundred 
rupees will a Gurkha serve the Sirkar for a year. 
If you had the services of one Gurkha for one year 
for every round that you have fired during the last 
month, you would now stand possessed of every 
gtm in the world. With Lucas Sahib, and Bruce 
Sahib, and fifty men from my pultan, the General 
Sahib would in one week have in his verandah such 
a pile of breechblocks that the doors would not 
open, and we should have painted them all red to 
prevent rust." 

"But this is a white man's war." 

Mahabir Thapa put down his glass slowly. His 
eyes clearly said, "Thank God for that!" but his 



322 APPENDIX 

answer was, "I cannot understand ; it is the war of 
kings, I am but a man." 

How could he understand? What did he know 
of Staff College strategy and modern tactics? Mili- 
tary history, depression range-finders, telescopic 
sights, and chess-board calculations meant nothing 
to the man who, given half a company of little 
heathens in grass shoes, was prepared to dismantle 
the whole of the artillery of the South African 
Republics. 
27th November 1899. 



AN INTERCEPTED LETTER. 

The following letter was discovered the other 
day amongst the bags which were sent back to us, 
not having succeeded in getting through the Boer 
lines : — 

To Mr. Smith, Esq., Collector Sahib, Mosiiffer- 
nugger, N.W.P., India. 

Nov. 10, 1899. 
Most Honoured Sir, — Your humble servant begs 
to inquire after your egregious and illustrious 
health. And as above poor petitioner wishes to 
bring this my humble petition for kind considera- 
tion of above. Since after subsequent many days 
arrival in this place called Lady Smith, undersigned 
being loyal subject but of timid nature, has suffered 
cannon-balls, and many long toms for these many 



APPENDIX 323 

days, and since few days have suffered sickness 
with pains and spasms. 

Sir, I am not military soldier, and am in constant 
terror of balls as above. Undersigned would there- 
fore pray that your most noble opulence would 
bring kind consideration to bear, and bring relief 
on your honour's most humble and beseeching 
petitioner, as since many days I am hiding in hole, 
and dare not make exit from same. Please to give 
order that I return to your honour's service with- 
out delay, for which act of kindness grovelling 
petitioner will ever pray, as in duty bound, for your 
honour's long life and prosperity. — Ever your most 
humble and obedient servant, 

Sheo Narain Das, Baboo. 
30th November 1899. 



THE RELIEF OF LADYSMITH. 

Reprinted from the 'Times' of December 5th, 2099. 
A WONDERFUL DISCOVERY. 

The eminent German archaeologist. Dr. Poomp- 
schiffer, has recently contributed to science the most 
interesting discovery of the century. It will be re- 
membered that the learned professor started in the 
spring on a tour of exploration among the buried 
cities of Natal. When last heard of, in October, 
he had excavated the remains of Maritzburg and 
Estcourt, and was cutting his way through the 



324 APPENDIX 

dense primeval forests on the banks of the Tugela. 
By cable yesterday came intelligence of even more 
sensational finds. Briefly, Dr. Poompschiffer has 
rediscovered the forgotten town of Ladysmith. 
Crossing the Tugela, the intrepid explorer pushed 
northward. The dense bush restricted his progress 
to three miles a day. On the third day' Poomp- 
schiffer noticed strange booming sounds frequently 
repeated ; none of his party could guess what they 
were, and curiosity ran high. On the sixth day 
the mystery was explained. The party came suddenly 
upon a group of what were at first taken for a 
species of extinct reptile, but which the profound 
learning of Poompschiflfer enabled him to recog- 
nise as 

THE LAST SURVIVALS OF THE PREHISTORIC 
BOERS. 

Their appearance was almost terrifying. They 
were all extremely old. Their white beards had 
grown till they trailed beneath their feet, and it was 
the custom of the field-cornets to knee-halter each 
man at night with his own beard to prevent him 
from running away. Their clothes had fallen tO' 
pieces with age, but a thick and impenetrable coat- 
ing of dust and melinite kept them warm. Their 
occupation was as quaint as their appearance. 
They were firing obsolete machines, conjectured to 
be the cannon of the ancients, in the direction of a 
heap of cactus-grown ruins. That heap of ruins 
was the fabled fortress of Ladysmith. 



APPENDIX 



325 



Students of history will remember the Boer war 
of 1899, from which public attention was distracted 
by the great War Office strike. The learned will 
also remember at a later period, after the closing 
of that office, the controversy in our columns on 
the question whether Ladysmith existed or not, 
which the general voice of experts finally decided 
in the negative. It is now proved that so-called 
savants of that rude age were mistaken. Not only 
did Ladysmith exist, not only was it besieged, but 
up to the day before yesterday 

THE SIEGE OF LADYSMITH WAS STILL 
GOING ON. 

The site of the town at first appeared uninhabited. 
But when Poompschift'er commenced excavating 
he came, to his amazement, upon signs of old work- 
ings at a depth of only a few feet below the surface. 
For an instant, he tells us, he thought some other 
antiquarian had been before him. Next moment 
some creature blundered along the tunnel into his 
very arms. It was secured and brought into the 
light. It was the last inhabitant of Ladysmith. 

It was apparently one of the children born since 
the beginning of the siege, and was about a hun- 
dred years old. From living in underground holes 
it was bent double, and quite blind. It appeared 
unable to speak, only repeating constantly, in a 
crooning voice, the syllables, "Weeskee, weeskee," 
which Poompschififer was unable to translate. The 
professor was anxious to secure this unique speci- 



320 



APPENDIX 



men for the Kaiser William Museum of Antiquities, 
at Berlin. But the moment it was removed from 
Ladysmith it began to pine away. Having never 
known any state of life but bombardment, it was 
terrified by the absence of artillery-fire. Time after 
time it attempted to escape to its native shells. 
Poompschififer endeavoured to maintain life by arti- 
ficial bombardment, letting ofif crackers in its ear, 
and pelting it with large stones. But all was in 
vain : the extraordinary creature was not deceived, 
and in a few hours, with a last despairing wail of 
"Weeskee," it expired through sheer terror at the 
safety of its surroundings. 
5th December 1899. 



THE END. 



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